RFP to reimagine Emancipation Park is part of the city?s ongoing process of reflection 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.) Opponents of the statues? removal have sued the city, arguing the city doesn?t, under Virginia state law, have the right to remove the monuments. That case is currently in state court.

The name changes and proposed removals may be just the beginning of the changes ahead: Charlottesville?s Parks and Recreation Department has issued a request for proposals for a redesign of both park...