Charlottesville wasn't about Robert E. Lee, Mr. President. It was about racism | By Nicole Hemmer for CNNOpinion
Nicole Hemmer is an assistant professor in presidential studies at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia and the author of"Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics." She hosts the history podcast"Past Present" and released the podcast"A12." The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. View more opinion articles on CNN.
After former Vice President Joe Biden used the violence in Charlottesville to frame his presidential campaign launch on Thursday, President Trump shot back, defending his controversial claim that there were"very fine people" on both sides of the white-supremacist rally that ended with the death of Heather Heyer and a helicopter crash that killed two police officers.
Nicole Hemmer"I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee," Trump said in answer to a reporter's question on Friday."People there were protesting the taking down of the monument to Robert E. Lee. Everybody knows that.
Heather Heyer's mom breaks silence on Biden invoking Charlottesville 03:03In early 2017, white supremacist organizer Richard Spencer and Charlottesville-based alt-right activist Jason Kessler turned their attention to Charlottesville and a recent city council decision to remove the statues of Lee and Stonewall Jackson from the city's public parks.
Was it smart for Biden to focus campaign launch on Trump, Charlottesville? 06:06The men put in bald terms what defenders of the Confederacy seldom stated or even acknowledged: the deeply racist history behind the statues and their subjects.If that daytime event was about white supremacy, the nighttime event was about white power. A hundred members of the alt-right returned to Lee Park with torches.
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