There was a logo, social media pages, a website, t-shirts and water bottles, a Community Action Committee, and months of events and programming. The City of Charlottesville also provided financial support for Unity Days in 2019, an effort to counter the second anniversary of a deadly white supremacist rally with a celebration of diversity. At a table gathering at Ix Park that encouraged people to have difficult and meaningful conversations, UVA President Jim Ryan declared it was time the “mend fences” and have long-overdue conversations.

“I had this inkling that, as often happens out of tragedy, there is possibility," said Ryan.

Unity Days featured music, arts, bold programming (the history of eugenics, segregation, and Black Face at UVA, as well as the racial and ethnic history of Charlottesville), and the City took suggestions for events from everyone in the community. It was Charlottesville’s effort to memorialize the tragic events of 2017 and bring the community together in a spirit of reconciliation and understanding. There was even a pledge:

“We, the community members of Charlottesville, come together this summer in a spirit of healing and unity for a variety of events that educate, inspire, and honor people in our community to move towards economic and racial justice.”

That effort was short-lived. Unity Days was quietly abandoned by the City after Covid hit in March 2020 and never resumed. This year is the 5th anniversary of the deadly Unite the Right rally, but the City has no official plans to mark the occasion. And, apparently, no real interest in doing so.

About a month ago, Charlottesville Mayor Lloyd Snook told The Daily Progress that there "are a number of folks who feel that we shouldn’t be looking to do really much of anything" for the 5th anniversary of Unite the Right.

"There’s not a lot of appetite in Charlottesville for ‘Hey, let’s relive the glory days of five years ago.’" he said.

Snook tells The DTM that he recently polled his fellow Councilors, and the City Manager's staff, and that no one had any great interest in doing anything.

"There is little consensus on what a remembrance of August 12 would look like," Snook says. "Unity Days was not really a remembrance, but more of an effort to embrace a broader vision of what Charlottesville is."

As for remembrances, Snook went on to say that "on a national scale, we are told that the events of August 11 and 12 represent the beginning of the expression by the Alt-Right of the Great Replacement Theory -- the view that Jews had replaced white Americans, and that white Americans needed to respond. There is a national push to have August 11-12 remembered as an anti-Semitic event, but that is not how we in Charlottesville experienced it, and not how we remember it. So with no agreement on what exactly we would be remembering, there was no interest in the City doing something. We certainly don't discourage private expressions of remembrance, but we had little interest in having a public remembrance."

Snook also pointed out that the city officials who championed Unity Days were gone, and that the police department staff was down 30%, which would make it difficult to provide security on such short notice.

Indeed, the city leaders, mostly Black leaders, who championed Unity Days in 2019 - former City Manager Tarron Richardson, Police Chief RaShall Brackney, Charlottesville Office of Human Rights manager Charlene Green, and communication director Brian Wheeler - either resigned, were fired, or left their positions. Richardson and Brackney (who, ironically, was fired over fears that police department staff would leave) both filed lawsuits against the city.

For activist Tanesha Hudson, who has been pressuring Mayor Snook and the City to do something to memorialize A12, Unity Days was a remembrance, a celebration, and a way to hold the city to account.

"The city needs something positive like Unity Days to remove the negative vibes from July 8 and August 11 and 12," says Hudson. "The entire summer was positive in 2019 and it allowed the negative stain that sits on this city to not even be recognized. Unity Days also held this city accountable to be diverse and inclusive, allowing all races and cultures to plan events they could enjoy."

And Hudson isn't buying Snook’s argument.

"The fact that there's no solid plan for the 5th anniversary, or a permanent day of remembrance like Unity Days," Hudson says, "...is so pathetic of everyone [at City Hall]. We contribute so much money to non-profits, why not contribute to uniting our community so we can really turn that stain of Unite the Right into Unity?"

While Snook said his fellow Councilors, when polled, had no interest in memorializing A12, that’s not what City Councilor Michael Payne told The Daily Progress last month.

“The events of August 11 and 12 continue to define the past several years in our community, and our politics,” said Payne. “I think it’s something we should memorialize.”

Payne was asked to elaborate, but he did not respond.

Indeed, with the 5th anniversary coming up, and the white supremacist movement having grown bolder, “Charlottesville” is going to continue to define Charlottesville — and there's sure to be more national attention this August. Even if there isn't an "appetite to relive" the events of August 12, as Snook believes, history - and the Internet - is unlikely to forget. So, then, what will Charlottesville have to say for itself in August?

The City did approve a recent proposal by Charlottesville-based photojournalist Eze Amos, who offered to display his photographs of those impacted by the Unite the Right rally in the trees on the Downtown Mall for a memorial installation entitled “The Story of Us: Reclaiming the Narrative of #Charlottesville through Portraits of Community Resilience.” However, the City has virtually no involvement in the project and is not contributing any funds. Amos has had to launch a GoFundMe page. The only other formal effort to memorialize the 5th anniversary comes from The Daily Progress, which has created a pledge that readers can sign. Pledge-signers’ names will be published in a special edition of the paper on August 12, 2022.

“We must lead by example,” declares the DP. “And we must act against injustice, and turn anger into righteous action.”

Price Thomas, who was the director of marketing and communications at James Madison's Montpelier in 2019 (he now works for the United Way here in Charlottesville), attended and volunteered at two Unity Days events.

Today, speaking for himself, Thomas still thinks the Unity Days concept was a strong one.

"This theory of reconciliation is one that Charlottesville and the country at large have been contending with for a while, and will continue to wrestle with and debate,” he says.

However, Thomas believes Unity Days fell by the wayside because "this reconciliatory spirit wasn’t, to my knowledge, met with tangible action."

"Hosting more talks, convening more panels, having more conversations that ultimately produce what?" Thomas says. " We have all of this effort and rigor around educating and inspiring -- which are undoubtedly important -- but after a while what is the outcome? What are this effort, energy, and dollars directed at? I get the sense that there is fatigue in our community - and probably others -- around efforts that appear performative instead of, at some level, making some sort of discernible impact, whether that’s funding minority businesses, moving policy implementation on criminal justice forward, or helping economically-disadvantaged families scale and have access to resources."

Indeed, the lack of enthusiasm from current city leaders for Unity Days, and what it represented, certainly makes the 2019 effort appear performative.

In fact, as a meeting of the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitor’s Bureau in early 2021 revealed, changing public perceptions about Charlottesville, rather than drawing attention to the past, was becoming a priority. Board members expressed concerns that the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally continued to present a "branding problem" for the Charlottesville area. Instead of supporting something like Unity Days in 2021, the tourism board launched "Discover Black Cville," a marketing effort to attract tourists to the area. As Courtney Cacatian, executive director of the CACVB, explained, it was an effort to "shine a spotlight on Black-owned businesses and a history outside of the Black history tied to Thomas Jefferson." Unlike Unity Days, which sought to memorialize August 2017 and encourage difficult discussions about race, equity, and social justice, the tourism board - and by extension, the governments of Charlottesville and Albemarle County, and the business community - was looking for new messaging to "repair" negative media coverage about Charlottesville.

At the time, then-Mayor Nikuyah Walker warned the Board that focusing on "re-branding" Charlottesville, without focusing on the "cultural issues here that we desire to change," would end up changing nothing.

Web update: Neglected to mention that the Ix Art Park Foundation is stepping up to the plate. They're planning a 2nd annual "Soul of Cville Festival" for August 12 -14. "It is so important to us as a community nonprofit to create an inclusive and welcoming space in Charlottesville and to support leaders of the Black community in reclaiming this date," says Ix Park marketing director Danielle Bricker.

Note: While the Albemarle County DEI office is listed as a partner for this event, there's no participation from the City of Charlottesville.