It was one of the last weeks of summer, when the days are hot and long. It had rained in the early evening on Friday, August 11, 2017, a welcome break in the southern heat in Charlottesville, Virginia. As the sun began its descent over the hills outside town, a group of University of Virginia students were sprawled out on the living room floor of a beloved professor, Walt Heinecke, eating homemade spaghetti and making protest signs for a white nationalist demonstration scheduled for the next morning.
This group of student antiracist activists had been preparing all summer for the next day. Some had counter-demonstrated at a Ku Klux Klan protest in June, when a measly showing of a few dozen KKK members protested removing two Confederate statues from downtown Charlottesville. About two thousand community members and students showed up to shout them down.
“There was nothing scary about it, really,” Alan Zimmerman, president of the only synagogue in town, Congregation Beth Israel, said. “I thought the feeling in the air was triumphant, almost: Oh, the big bad Ku Klux Klan came to Charlottesville and we shouted them down, a thousand to one.”
So most of the students expected something similar on Saturday, August 12, too. Local activists knew that far more neo-Nazis and white supremacists were planning to march, perhaps hundreds, that Saturday morning, downtown.
The neo-Nazis had other plans.
What ensued was the violent, flaming torch-lit nighttime march on UVa’s campus that stunned the nation: white supremacists chanting “You will not replace us,” with Tiki torches held aloft.
The students got word it was happening, and without much of a second thought, went running toward the danger.
This is one of the stories in my new book, 24 Hours in Charlottesville: An Oral History of the Stand Against White Supremacy. I was a local news reporter in Charlottesville for the year and a half leading up to those fateful days in August 2017, and had just started my dream job producing for Anderson Cooper at CNN in New York when I found myself back in town, producing his coverage of the riot. For this book, five years later, I interviewed dozens of people, many of whom had never spoken to the press, and scoured court transcripts, government documents and social media posts to reconstruct what happened during those 24 hours. Here is one story of the brave young people who stood up to the neo-Nazis.
On the evening of Friday, August 11, 2017, a group of student activists gathered at Professor Walt Heinecke’s house near campus.
Kendall King, UVa third-year student: That night we were going through the day’s agenda for August 12th and we were saying, OK, does everybody have a buddy? Does everybody have water? Here’s our starting point.
Devin Willis, UVa second-year student: At some point during the dinner, somebody came in—I don’t remember who it is anymore—and informed us like, Hey, we heard that [white nationalist organizer] Jason Kessler and some of his people are going to have something and it might be at UVa.
Kendall King: So we were just like, All right, drop everything. Let’s go. Get your buddy.
Devin Willis: One of the signs was already finished that we had intended to use for Unite the Right. So they were like, we’re going to take this sign and go over there.
**Devin, Kendall, and other friends drove over to Grounds, parked, and then met up with a few more friends at the Jefferson statue outside the Rotunda. There were only a handful of students there, no white nationalists. **
Devin Willis: We’re like, OK, so we got here first. Someone decided the plan was that we’re going to link arms and we’re going to form a circle at the base of the statue.
Kendall King: We had no intention of it being any sort of message about protecting the institution or defending Jefferson. A common civil rights tactic is to hold hands and form a blockade.
**One of the students they met up with was Devin’s friend, Natalie Romero. **
Natalie Romero, second-year UVa student: I was wearing flip-flops, a little tank top, some knitted shorts. Like, in no way was I trying to meet protesters. I was just, you know, it’s your school. I’m walking distance, really. I just wanted to witness it for my own eyes.
Devin Willis: We didn’t have enough people to form the ring around the base of the statue. I could hear them talking about it on the other side: We don’t have enough, we don’t have enough, we don’t have enough.
Natalie Romero: We weren’t there for long before [the white nationalists] arrived.
Devin Willis: I’m holding hands with Nat. It was just a lot of really loud and deep shouting coming from the other side of the Rotunda.
Natalie Romero: I just heard loudness, almost like thunder, like the earth was growling, essentially. When we heard the roaring, we were like, What should we do? We just linked arms and held hands and started to sing.
I looked down, closed my eyes, prayed a little bit. I was terrified. To my right was Devin. And we were just holding hands. We just looked at each other like, It’s OK, we’re going to be OK.
Devin Willis: You start to see the glow, this mysterious glow on the other side of the Rotunda. And the shouting and growling gets louder, and these people, these lights, start rushing over the steps. I can see the steps from where I’m standing, and this ocean of light and flames just starts spilling over both sides of the steps and washing down.
I was really scared because it looked like a lynch mob. Fire is a very intentional thing and it’s a very scary thing.
Natalie Romero: The swarms of people coming down at us, just . . . the sky was dark with flame, dark and angry. It just felt like war. It literally was like a scene straight out of a movie swarming down towards us.
You wouldn’t even understand the magnitude. They were coming from either side, it felt like hundreds of people. Angry, upset, screaming, yelling.
We were singing at first. Then it was like complete silence. Like, what do we—what am I going to sing right now? I’m terrified.
Devin Willis: You start to hear what they’re saying.
White nationalists: Blood and soil!
One people, one nation, end immigration.
You will not replace us!
Jews will not replace us!
Devin Willis: The vast majority of the men were white, adult-looking. A lot of them had the same haircuts. And almost all of them were wearing some combination of a white dress shirt or polo shirt and khaki pants. I also saw several people who had holstered weapons on the side of their hip. And they basically just rushed the entire area and surrounded all of us in a matter of seconds.
I realized as they were coming, and as it was too late to go anywhere, that I was really wrong about how many people would be there.
The students were vastly outnumbered by the white nationalists.
Counterprotesters: Black lives matter! Black lives matter!
Kendall King: I was with my buddy, who was Devin. We just chanted and chanted and chanted, but then it became clear once they surrounded us, it was like, Oh shit, what have we done?
Elizabeth Sines, UVa law student: Through the chaos, there were students at the base holding a sign: VA Students Act Against White Supremacy.
That was the sign completed at Professor Heinecke’s spaghetti dinner.
Natalie Romero: Once they started to surround us, they kind of directly came at Devin and I. And they were saying very specific things to us:
Go back to where you came from.
Stupid bitch.
Stuff like that. Monkey noises.
Devin Willis: I’ve really tried to drive these comments out of my mind, but I know that the monkey noises were happening again. And it’s extremely hot because of all the
flame.
Natalie Romero: Devin and I were the only people of color on that side. And it was very, very obvious and very apparent. They were screaming at us. I tried to jump up onto the statue, but there’s literally no little platform or anything. And I’m wearing sandals. So I’m like, I’m going to get trampled. For reference, I’m 4′10″ and a half. I’m tiny. And everyone is just giant, screaming.
**Walt Heinecke, the professor who had hosted spaghetti dinner, was at a prayer service across the street. **
Walt Heinecke, UVa professor: This activist… came up to me. And she looks up and sees me and says, Hey, Walt, your students are surrounded by neo-Nazis at the Rotunda. And for a minute, I didn’t quite—it didn’t quite process, but she came back and she said, Hey, Walt, man, these, these kids are surrounded and it’s not pretty.
So I ran over there and lo and behold, I saw these 150, 200 neo-Nazis with torches. The students were in a circle, locked arms around the statue. And I looked around and I didn’t see any police presence.
Allen Groves, UVa dean of students: Walt comes running up to me and says, Allen, where are the police? I said, I don’t know.
And so he said, The students are surrounded. And I said, What do you mean the students are surrounded? And he said, There’s a group of students who’ve locked arms around the statue. They’re in the middle there. And I said, We’ve got to get them out.
Chris Suarez, reporter, Charlottesville Daily Progress: I was at the top of the Rotunda looking down when I saw, suddenly, flames being flung at people. They were screaming. Obviously something very bad was happening.
Devin Willis: Tiki torches, still on fire, were being thrown in our direction. They’re also being wielded as weapons. They’re being swung at the crowd. You’re just trying to make yourself as small as possible so you get hit by as few things as possible.
Brian Moran, secretary, Virginia Public Safety and Homeland Security: It broke out into absolute chaos there for, I don’t know, it seemed like a long time, but it probably was a few minutes.
Devin Willis: So at about that moment is when Dean Groves appears. Dean Groves was the dean of students at UVa at the time. He was somebody, I think, whose job it was to know everybody.
Allen Groves: I remembered Devin. We had met his first year. I had asked a student, a fourth-year who was in charge of this group called Black Male Initiative, which was a conversation group, and I said, Would you mind if I attended one of these? And I promise, I won’t say anything, but I’d love to . . . it would help me grow as a person to hear this perspective. And he said, Absolutely, Dean Groves. So I came and kind of sat off to the side and Devin was a brand new first-year. You could tell he was so gifted and so bright and so thoughtful in the points that he made that evening. And so he and I ended up having a couple of lunches and stayed in touch with each other. And so, yes, I recognized him that night. He was the one person, the one student I recognized.
It didn’t surprise me he was there because he was a person of strong values and strong beliefs and he wanted to take a stand against this. But Devin is not a large guy. And I had seen the guys that were surrounding him and I was very worried about violence.
So I just pushed through the crowd and Walt, to his credit, was right behind me. And I don’t remember a lot of calculated analysis. I just felt like, I’m the dean, these are my students. And I’ve got to protect them.
I leaned in to Devin and I said, It’s Dean Groves. It’s Dean Groves. I’d taken my hat off so they could see this [white] hair, which is kind of part of my brand, and so I said, It’s Dean Groves. This is terribly unsafe. I’ve got to get you out of here.
And I still remember, I never saw it coming: One of the torches comes flying in and hits me. It was thrown as a spear and it hit me kind of in the chest and arm. And I cut my arm and I remember yelling an expletive and kicking the little canister away, the flaming canister away on the ground.
And then just all hell broke loose. They started beating the students and the community members that are around the statue with their torches. There was Mace everywhere. And so I was grabbing students and pulling them out of the way and coming back in and trying to get them out of the mob. I got Maced in the face. I remember doubling over and trying to catch my breath and clear my face.
I didn’t realize I was bleeding until after I pulled my shirt up after it was all done and realized that, yeah, it [the thrown torch] had cut me and there was blood on my shirt and on my arm. Remarkably, not as bad as it could have been—if the flaming gel from the canister and stuff had hit me dead in my chest and that had caught fire, that might have been pretty dicey.
Larry Sabato, UVa professor: He was right in the middle of it and really tried to get those people away from the students. They were vicious to him and everyone else. I don’t know if they knew he was dean of students or not, I’m not sure it mattered one way or the other.
I felt kinda guilty for standing on the steps.
Walt Heinecke: Within seconds after that, I noticed that one of those leaders of the neo-Confederates was punching one of the lead student organizers in the face. And then seconds after that, the neo-Nazis and the neo-Confederate started Macing us or pepper spraying us. I got hit in the lip and on the leg, I was wearing shorts. And it just turned into a melee.
David Foky, news director, NBC29: It was like when you see the movies of foot soldiers clashing with hand-to-hand combat.
Devin Willis: There’s a lot of pepper spray in the air. It’s like there’s no fresh air left to breathe. All you can do is just try to get lower.
Kendall King: I got pepper sprayed in the eye, so I stopped being able to understand what was going on around me, which was also terrifying.
Devin Willis: I remember that someone from the direction of the mob threw some mysterious fluid. It looked like it came out of somebody’s tiki torch canister, and they threw it at the direction of our feet. It seemed like it might be some type of lighter fluid or something like that, and I thought that their strategy was going to be to burn us alive.
It got on and near my shoes, which was really scary. So I tried to break the trail. And so I tried to stand further on the marble of the statue and off of the brick that was now doused. I thought I had made a very terrible mistake and that I might die that night.
Source: original interviews with the author. Additional material from the official court transcripts from Elizabeth Sines et al., Plaintiffs, v. Jason Kessler et al., Defendants. Sines v. Kessler. Civil Action No: 3:17-CV-00072, (W.D. Va.), and Maggie Mallon, “Elizabeth Sines and Leanne Chia Were in Charlottesville When White Supremacists Descended—This Is What They Saw,” Glamour, August 18, 2017.
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