Deborah Baker — Charlottesville: An American Story - with Maurice Jackson

In August 2017, over a thousand neo-Nazis, fascists, Klan members, and neo-Confederates descended on a small southern city to protest the pending removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. Within an hour of their arrival, the city's historic downtown was a scene of bedlam as armored far right cadres battled activists in the streets. Before the weekend was over, a neo-Nazi had driven a car into a throng of counterprotesters, killing a young woman and injuring dozens.Pulitzer Prize finalist Deborah Baker has written a riveting and panoptic account of what unfolded that weekend, focusing less on the rally's far right leaders than on the story of the city itself. University, local, and state officials, including law enforcement, were unable or unwilling to grasp the gathering threat. Clergy, activists, and organizers from all walks of life saw more clearly what was coming and, at great personal risk, worked to warn and defend their city.To understand why their warnings fell on deaf ears, Baker does a deep dive into American history. In her research she discovers an uncannily similar event that took place decades before when an emissary of the poet and fascist Ezra Pound arrived in Charlottesville intending to start a race war. In Charlottesville, Baker shows how a city more associated with Thomas Jefferson than civil unrest became a flashpoint in a continuing struggle over our nation's founding myths.PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781644453414?ic_referral=m9A7rCZYtbwPS4pagn-g6LiRk2nh2Wn0LqBbOCaQVMwwM06_FNMqzDjbJyDs4m17FY2tLG3R33Qu58vp88PRbNP2JMv26PzXKuAoP2_Id8vKCxV6ZvskI5Ud6PBa7T0txY10hFQDeborah Baker is the author of In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, as well as A Blue Hand; The Beats in India. She divides her time between Calcutta, Goa, and Brooklyn.Baker is in conversation with Maurice Jackson, who teaches Atlantic world and African American history at Georgetown University. He is author of Let This Voice Be Heard, and coeditor of African Americans and the Haitian Revolution, DC Jazz, and Rhythms of Resistance. He was the inaugural chair of the Washington, DC, Commission on African American Affairs, appointed by the mayor.*recorded 6/14/2025