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Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Virginia, has become the focus of national and international media attention after this weekend’s marches, protests, and attacks at a “Unite the Right” rally led by white nationalist groups . Demonstrators and counter-protesters fought in and around the one-block-square park in downtown Charlottesville, which features, not coincidentally, a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Emancipation Park as locus for violence cannot be separated from its history (or its oxidized monument to that history). As Megan Garber writes for CityLab, Charlottesville is rich with landmarks and reminders of its Confederate past —not only in Emancipation Park . Previously known as Lee Park, the name was officially changed in June 2017, a few months after Charlottesville’s city council voted to remove the statue. (The council also voted to remove a similar monument to Confederate general Stonewall Jackson from the city’s Justice, then “Jackson,” Park.) Oppo...

In the wake of the violence that erupted earlier this month at a white nationalist rally in Virginia, Asheville City Council approved a resolution condemning the actions of white supremacists and racial violence in Charlottesville. The resolution passed at its Aug. 22 meeting reads , in part: The Asheville City Council do hereby reject the message of all hate groups; renounce racism, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, the KKK, neo-Nazis, domestic terrorism and hatred; declare that those who want to spread hatred, bigotry and violence have no place in the city of Asheville; and commit to ensuring that Asheville remains a place of love and compassion, where hate is not, and never will be, welcome. The resolution also tasks Council ’s Governance Committee with reviewing “the relevant General Statutes and other applicable laws related to historical markers and monuments on city property.” Mayor Esther Manheimer said the city will formulate a plan for public engagement around monuments....