The threats are like a bad faucet, a ceaseless stream of invective and hatred. The pitter-patter is so constant that Robbie Kaplan has learned to tune it out; white noise.
Still, some pronouncements land harder than others. The ones that promise violence. The ones that mention her son. The ones that are too detailed, filled in with gruesome specifics. And the ones that leave just enough to the imagination. Like: “After this stupid kike whore loses this fraudulent lawsuit, we’re going to have a lot of fucking fun with her.”
It was mid-June, and months since Kaplan and her co-counsel Karen Dunn had filed a lawsuit against the white supremacists who’d swarmed Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. In that time, Kaplan, who is Jewish, has grown accustomed to her neo-Nazi menaces. But even so, for her, this crossed a line. For one, the threat had been shared on Telegram, a messaging platform popular with the alt-right. And second, the person who posted it was none other than Christopher Cantwell, a famed internet white nationalist with a violent criminal record who also happens to be a defendant in Sines v. Kessler, Kaplan and Dunn’s suit. (Other defendants include Jason Kessler, Richard Spencer, Matthew Heimbach, and groups like Identity Evropa and the League of the South.)
The incident spurred Kaplan and Dunn to pursue sanctions against Cantwell, asking that the court order him to stop harassing not just Kaplan, but the plaintiffs as well. The motion is still pending. In the meantime, it’s at least cost Cantwell his representation. In a court filing, his now-former attorneys said they were at a “loss” over how to counter Kaplan’s claims.
When I meet Kaplan for the first time and ask about the threats, she almost smiles. She gets it; how much these men despise her. She’s a woman who happens to be both a lesbian and Jewish. Since the 2016 presidential election, she has worn a small star of David around her neck—a personal reminder to keep up the fight against hate in it all its nefarious forms.
When it became clear soon after that weekend in Charlottesville that there were survivors who wanted to seek justice in court, Kaplan decided to pursue the case. (It is now backed with support from Integrity First for America, an organization founded in 2017 that seeks to support public interest litigation. Amy Spitalnick, who was formerly the communications director to New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, is IFA’s executive director.)
Her and Dunn’s approach is unique, but the case doesn’t stand alone. There has been at least one trial in connection to Charlottesville; in June, the man who plowed his car into a group of counter-protestors and killed Heather Heyer was sentenced to life in prison. But the case that Kaplan and Dunn will argue has different aims. With it, IFA doesn’t just take a group of men to court. It puts the alt-right on trial.
Two years ago, hundreds of white supremacists marched on Charlottesville. Within 48 hours, an entire metropolis had been immobilized and one woman was dead. In the months that followed, the violence piled up. In Pittsburgh, the Tree of Life shooting claimed 11 lives, and a hate-fueled attack in El Paso left 22 people dead. Terror is chaotic; that’s a feature, not a bug. But the implementation of it has to be meticulous.
Kaplan understood that—how much time it would have taken the men who’d swarmed Charlottesville to plan and plot “Unite the Right,” as their event had been christened, the resources that have to be marshaled to incite violence. But still, she knew, too, that our cultural theories about “lone wolves” and crazed, impulsive madmen are durable. It wasn’t just that she wanted justice for the victims of Charlottesville, although she did and does; she wanted to illuminate the sophisticated structure of a resurgent white supremacist movement in America. She wanted to prove that the violence committed in Charlottesville had been purposeful and deliberate. In legal speak, well, Dunn explains it best: “If two people are members of a conspiracy, one will be liable for the acts of the other, when those acts were reasonably foreseeable.” In 2019 terms, Kaplan wanted the receipts.
She is long dead, but the presence of Sally Hemings looms larger than life at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, the plantation where she was enslaved for most of her life and where a $35 million restoration of the grounds made way for the “Life of Sally Hemings” exhibit—a modest room tucked away in a wing of the great mansion that curators hope will encompass the story of a woman whose life and legacy was often ignored in history, lest it mar a great man’s legacy.
Now, as the Black woman who bore six children (only four lived to adulthood) by America’s third president symbolically steps from the shadows, another Black woman—alive, brilliant and in all ways free—literally steps up to lead Monticello forward.
On June 15, Melody Barnes was elected Vice Chairman of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the nonprofit that has owned and operated Monticello for 95 years. And after a two-year term, she will become the group’s chairman, the first Black person, man or woman, to ever inhabit the role, the foundation exclusively tells Glamour.
“Ironically, I went to Thomas Jefferson High School, and I received the Jefferson Book Award as a student,” she says, noting that she has loved history since she was a girl. “As an African-American woman from Virginia, it’s important for me to be [at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation] because for so long, Black people in Virginia have not had their story told, [and] have not been asked to tell their story.”
Barnes is from Richmond, Virginia, a city steeped in American history and largely defined by its complex past. Her birthplace is not unlike Charlottesville, where in 1769 Jefferson’s slaves built Monticello under his design and direction, and where last August, white nationalist groups converged on the city, leaving in their wake deadly violence. Along with 5,000 acres, his mansion, his cattle and honeybees, Jefferson owned over 600 individuals during his lifetime. Hemings was one of 400 Black people enslaved at the sprawling mountaintop estate—at age 14, she was sent to Paris from Monticello to be a servant to his young daughter during Jefferson’s time there. By the time of her American homecoming two years later, one of her sons noted in his writings, she was pregnant. Hemings would go on to birth six children by Jefferson, all of them delivered into the confines of slavery, all of them part of a legacy reflecting a country mired in racism. A problem which persists today.
“Understanding the past helps you understand the current day, and helps you connect those points across time and the present moment,” says Barnes. “Growing up in Richmond, I learned that.”
Barnes, a senior fellow and Compton Visiting Professor in World Politics at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, brings to the foundation a unique mix of professional knowledge and personal experience. From 2009 to 2012, she served as an assistant to President Barack Obama and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. She is a woman who knows the gravity of the president’s role better than most, but who also lives the reality of a Black American, a descendent of enslaved people like Hemings and those at Monticello, daily.
“For a long time at Monticello, slavery was downplayed,”
Richmond was the second largest slave trading port in America; hundreds of thousands of enslaved Black people were sold into bondage from its Shockoe Bottom docks. “I understood very early the pain of slavery,” says Barnes, “and the ensuing struggles through the years – Jim Crow, Massive Resistance – and how all those pieces fit together.” With such a foundation, Barnes is well-poised to lead a mission the Thomas Jefferson Foundation has renewed over the past several years: to tell a more complete narrative of the lives of those who called Monticello home, people enslaved and free, black and white.
“For a long time at Monticello, slavery was downplayed,” says Barnes. “People found it uncomfortable to contrast the 607 slaves Jefferson owned” with his role in writing our Declaration of Independence and, eventually, “leading the country.”
Arguably the most debated of all those enslaved human beings, Sally Hemings exists now as a literal shadowy silhouette. Her story, the scant details of which are depicted in the new exhibition that opened at Monticello on June 16, is rife with questions but spare on answers. What, if any, agency did Hemings have over her own life decisions? She successfully negotiated the freedom of her children with one of the most formidable men in history; did she ever seek her own liberty? Did her sexual relationship to Jefferson, and the unbalanced power dynamic between slave and master, equal rape?
PHOTO: The Washington Post/Getty Images
The silhouette of Hemings is displayed on a wall at the new “Life of Sally Hemings” exhibit at Monticello
In the age of #MeToo, as women assert their voices and reclaim personal power, this is a prime time to address these questions. Barnes says the foundation is also seeking a more complete understanding of the role women played at Jefferson’s estate.
“One thing that hasn’t been discussed much [is] understanding the lives of women at Monticello, including his wife Martha, who died fairly young, and his daughters. … So we are going to be leaning into that type of work as well,’ Barnes tells Glamour.
Barnes says the foundation is eager to learn how the public responds to the Hemings exhibit, which is based on facts recorded in the narratives of her son, Madison. “For too long, the truth about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings and their children has been denied. The importance of understanding all we could about her life, and the lives of others enslaved there, has been covered up over for years.”
Madeline Yurkoski, 23, lives in Ohio, and is a direct descendent of Madison Hemings.
“We are related through my mother’s grandfather’s side,” says Yurkoski. “I was raised my whole life knowing it; my mom told me the story, so I always knew I was descended from Sally Hemings.”
Yurkoski, who describes herself as “very fair skinned,” identifies as biracial. She says she honors her heritage, and is glad to witness the exhibition telling the Hemings story with dignity.
“The timing feels right for this.”
PHOTO: Images Etc Ltd/Getty Images
Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello
In 1993, the Getting Word oral history project was founded at Monticello, prompting descendants of the plantation’s enslaved families to tell their forebears’ stories, and record them alongside archival research. The project marked its 25th anniversary on the day Monticello unveiled its newest exhibits, including the one about Hemings. Set in the windowless room where Hemings likely lived, worked and raised her children, Barnes says the foundation ensured the exhibit was created “in a very thoughtful, detailed way.” Yurkoski was one of hundreds of descendants who reunited on Monticello’s mountaintop in mid-June. Additionally, the foundation published a report in 2000, stating Jefferson “most likely was the father of all six of Sally Hemings’s children,” based on oral history, as well as statistical and DNA evidence.
“I feel like I would have never seen this happening,” says Yurkoski of Barnes’ forthcoming leadership of the foundation. “It makes me feel proud.”
The myriad changes at Monticello, including Barnes’ forthcoming leadership, the Hemings exhibition, and a more inclusive narrative of the plantation, come at a critical time in the country. Once again, white nationalists plan to rally in August, on the anniversary of last year’s tragic rally in Charlottesville. This time when they march and chant in defense of “white rights,” they’ll do so in the nation’s capitol, in full view of the White House, which is itself now a symbol of discord and divide in today’s America. While the struggle continues, at least in one place, high on a mountain where a revered, if deeply flawed, man once lived, the conversation is shifting for the better, Barnes believes.
“For me as a Black woman, it’s a proud moment,” says Gayle Jessup White, Monticello’s community engagement officer and the great-great-great-granddaughter of Peter Hemings, one of Sally Hemings’ brothers. “Monticello is a microcosm of America, it always has been,” says White. “It represents America at its best and worst. What Melody represents is the growth and development at Monticello, which mirrors the evolution of our country’s values and mindsets.
“We’re still striving, obviously, but we as Americans are resilient.”
Calling all civil activists: Just weeks after a “Unite the Right” rally left one woman dead and more than a dozen wounded in Charlottesville, a bloc of several activist groups are marching from the Virginia city to Washington, D.C. to protest white supremacy.
Starting Monday (August 28) groups like Working Families, the Action Group Network, United We Dream, Color of Change, and the Women’s March will assemble in Charlottesville and begin heading North as part of a 10-day nonviolent demonstration that will concluded in Washington on September 6. As the event organizers detailed on the official website, the march is meant “to demonstrate our commitment to confronting white supremacy wherever it is found.”
“It’s clear that we can no longer wait for Donald Trump or any elected official to face reality and lead,” the organizers continued. “We are coming together to reckon with America’s long history of white supremacy, so that we can begin to heal the wounds of our nation.”
Basic meals, water, and snacks will be offered to the marchers, and housing will be provided primarily through churches along the planned route. A charted course can be found on the official website, but a rundown of the scheduled trajectory appears as follows:
Monday, August 28th – Charlottesville to Commonwealth, 3.5 mi.
Tuesday, August 29th – Commonwealth to Ruckersville, 13.2 mi.
Wednesday, August 30th – Ruckersville to Madison, 12.0 mi.
Thursday, August 31st – Madison to Culpeper, 17.6 mi.
Friday, September 1st – Culpeper to Remington, 11.6 mi.
Saturday, September 2nd – Remington to Calverton, 11.0 mi.
Sunday, September 3rd – Calverton to Manassas, 14.6 mi.
Monday, September 4th – Manassas to Fairfax, 13.7 mi.
Tuesday, September 5th – Fairfax to Falls Church, 8.2 mi.
Wednesday, September 6th – Falls Church to D.C., 8.0 mi.
Once the marchers make it to D.C., the plan isn’t to pack up their things a head home. Instead, they intend to remain in Washington for a sustained period of time until their overarching demands are met.
“This is the time for us to stand up for justice and equality. This is the time to confront white supremacy in our government and throughout our history,” the organizers explained. “We demand that President Trump be removed from office for allying himself with this ideology of hate and we demand an agenda that repairs the damage it’s done to our country and its people.”
I’m the proud mother of a three-year-old girl named Nylah. My daughter is confident, playful, expressive. Probably a lot like your daughter Arabella, Nylah loves to read, play with her dollhouse, and play make believe. Her imagination runs wild. There’s currently a zoo in our pantry, a gorilla that lives with us, and a princess castle at the beach we frequently visit. She has several imaginary friends and takes very good care of her “babies.” This imagination allows her to explore her world and it’s a joy to see what she’ll come up with next.
For Nylah, the only glimpse of fear is the occasional “monster” that has to be told to play gently. She does not yet know of the turmoil that exists in the world; a turmoil that has been created by adults for generations. She has no knowledge that some may view her as “different.” She does not yet know that her daddy and uncles are treated differently at routine traffic stops than her friend Tommy’s daddy and uncles. I’m sure your daughter also has limited knowledge of these things. As children, they shouldn’t have to understand, and it’s our job as parents to protect them from the cruelty of the adult world, at least while they’re young.
If my daughter has to play in parks or look at monuments that honor those who would prefer she were enslaved, how is she to feel the freedom and equality you claim to stand for? When you speak about equal pay for women, are you aware that women of color make even less than the 75 cents paid to their white counterparts? Did you know that African American women make a national average of 63 cents on the dollar to their white male counterparts and Latina women make 55 cents on the dollar? Those amounts are even less if you look at individual states.
So when you talk of pay equity, are you speaking up for my daughter? Does she deserve freedom from honoring those who fought to have her enslaved? Does she deserve human decency or is that only reserved for women of a certain race and/or status?
Your silence on the recent events in Charlottesville speaks volumes. Neither you nor your father went to the city in solidarity or to attend the funeral of Heather Heyer.
There’s specific wording this administration uses in an attempt to appease the rest of us while supporting racist and hateful groups. Your ability to fade into the background while he speaks in code and refuses to call out the Alt-Right and White Nationalists is baffling. Your privilege allows you to be safe. It allows you to as you put it, “quietly and candidly disagree” with the President.
As advocates for women, we can no longer afford to quietly disagree. As an advisor to the President, choosing to limit your activism to 140 characters on twitter is a symbol of your complacency and comfort. It’s not enough. People are dying; this is a reality the rest of us live with, for the sake of our families, we do not have the privilege to look away. Our lives are on the line. You have a great opportunity to spearhead a national dialogue. However, your privilege enabled you to ignore the request to meet with several Jewish leaders to lead a national discussion.
The glorification of confederacy that this administration is supporting is unpatriotic and dangerous. When the President says that taking down confederate statues is foolish and wrong and that it’s an attempt to “change our culture” I’m personally offended. As a mother, I’m appalled at the notion that these symbols of oppression should be worshipped.
If it’s too difficult to stand up to your father, perhaps it’s time for you and your husband to resign. If you don’t, we can only assume that you are in agreement with the President. If you cannot speak up for or don’t care about the rights of all women, such as the women who white nationalists and Nazis want to see oppressed or killed, then you need to move along because because the feminist movement is not a movement of discrimination. The feminist movement is either intersectional or it is null and void.
As the events in Charlottesville have shown, there is a limit to the comfort that white privilege can provide when you are actually Jewish. I’m both Black and Jewish. My father was a Russian Polish Jew who grew up in Queens, NY and was proud of his Jewish ancestry and the struggles his people overcame. My mother is African American and from New Orleans and her ancestors were some of the incredibly strong people who survived slavery. Therefore, I have no tolerance for bigotry and injustice, but I have even less tolerance for those who claim to stand for justice, except at times when standing would be inconvenient for their comfort and privilege.
As a woman—a black woman, a Jewish woman, and most of all as a fellow mother of a precious little daughter—I urge you, Ivanka, to speak up in no uncertain terms against the racist and anti-Semitic sentiments being supported by your father.
You cannot take on being Jewish without wearing the historical burden that being Jewish entails. Converting to Judaism is not enough if you do not understand the thousands of years of oppression that Jews have had to overcome.
Just a reminder: you’ll have to look your Jewish children in the face in a decade when they ask where you stood at this time in history when hate-filled Nazis were terrorizing and murdering people in the street. You can lie to them and say you did all you could, or you can tell them the truth and let them know that you stood on the sidelines. If you think that either option will make them feel good about themselves as Jewish children, you’re are sadly mistaken. In spite of what your father thinks, we both know there are no “fine people” who would march with those whose very motive is to see both your daughter and mine dominated by those who consider themselves superior.
I sincerely hope you’ll find the courage to speak up for your Jewish family’s right to exist as well as the rights of ALL Jewish, Black, Latino, Asian, Native American, Muslim, LGBTQ, Disabled and Non-White families to live and strive in a country they love and a country that recognizes that all cultures, all religions, and all people contribute to its greatness. You’ve injected yourself into our American political system. You’re currently in the West Wing of the people’s house. You and your husband are both advisors to the President with high-level security clearance.
You are no longer allowed to stand by on your platform and ignore the vile hate and violence that your father encourages, a hate that’s been lurking in this country since inception. Your children are Jewish. Neither your daughter or mine deserves to grow up in a society that devalues their existence for any reason.
Over the past week, tens of thousands of people showed up to rallies across the world that, in solidarity with the tragic violence in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend, protested against racism and bigotry. On Saturday in Boston, for example, police estimate 30,000 to 40,000 counter-protesters drowned out the roughly 50 people who showed up for a “Free Speech” rally.
Free Speech Boston, the group that organized the rally, said their event had been planned before the events of Charlottesville, when Heather Heyer was killed and dozens of others were injured protesting a white supremacist rally near the University of Virginia’s campus. Though organizers of the Boston gathering publicly denounced “the politics of supremacy and violence” that were on display in Charlottesville, two of the 14 scheduled speakers held far-right views, causing many to believe that the “Free Speech” event was serving as another platform for hate speech and prompting a massive turnout from Black Lives Matter and other groups.
But it wasn’t just Boston that people were protesting against white supremacists and bigotry: from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Portland, Maine—as well as in London, Amsterdam, and beyond—participants carried signs condemning racism and offering messages of love for all races, colors, and creeds. Here are some of the most powerful images that prove love always has and always will trump hate.
HATE WON’T WIN. Two years ago, my grandfather was murdered at a bible study in a Charleston church basement when a white supremacist, who believed that African Americans are somehow undeserving of life, opened fired on an entire room of people during prayer. This man killed, in addition to my grandfather, eight other churchgoers who invited him in to learn about God in an act of hate and fear. But I didn’t give him the power to control my grandfather’s legacy, shake my faith, or make me hate him back. I was able to look at him and told him that although my family member died at the hands of hate, he lived in love, he preached love, and his legacy will be love so HATE WON’T WIN.
It amazes me how people can posses a physical heart that is empty of anything we associate with a symbolic heart. Things like love, compassion, and courtesy are absent from the hearts and minds of the neo-nazi, the white supremacist, and the so-called alt-right—and all their followers, in Charlottesville and beyond. People all around us are revealing their true character by either joining them, defending their actions, or even worse, saying absolutely nothing in the name of what is right. Yes they’re evil, yes they’re wrong, and no, they’re not alone. But as grim as it looks, HATE WON’T WIN.
I know this, because I’ve lived it. And I beat it. With God leading me, my family beside me, and a community of people behind me, I resisted the temptation to let their anger, fear, and ignorance penetrate my spirit because that would be exactly what they want. They want to see us disoriented, weak with pain, and drunk with anger. But I’m asking you to resist that temptation and be stronger, be greater, be the embodiment of love in the face of hate so they too will know that HATE WON’T WIN.
The author, Alana Simmons, and her late grandfather, Rev. Daniel Lee Simmons Sr.
So, you’re wondering: where do we go from here? Who do we turn to? Well, my call to action is simple and derived from the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who once said “We are ALL superbly equipped to do this. We have known the agony of being the underdog. We must have a passion for peace born out of the wretchedness and misery of war. Giving our ultimate allegiance to the empire of justice.”
All that means to me is that whoever you are and whatever you do, you can help cure this great nation of the hate that has plagued us for so long.
If you’re in education, teach your students to be culturally competent. If you have a family, expose them to other cultures in an intentional and appreciative manner. If you’re in religion, teach and preach all the principles of love and hold your congregations accountable. If you’re in politics, use a moral code to lead and govern. Represent all the people you serve, not just the few you identify with. If you’re in media, use the power of your platform to inspire. If you have a heart, honor the lives of those we’ve lost and unify so HATE WON’T WIN.
When I lost my grandfather I took those words—hate won’t win—and turned them into a call to action. I challenged the world to find someone, extend an act of love across cultural lines, post it to their social media pages, inspire someone else to do the same, and repeat. The spirit of love, reconciliation, truth, grace, and humility filled our nation and it was the witness of that experience changing people who looked, worshiped, and valued differently that ensured me that HATE WON’T WIN.
*Hate Won’t Win is a non-profit organizations whose sole purpose is to advocate for unity through demonstrations of love. You can follow them on on Facebook @hatewontwinmovement.
