The new south: searching for Jefferson in Charlottesville, Virginia
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Version 0 of 1. It was Presidents’ Day, and somewhere beyond this gate lay Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home with its recognizable dome and columns. All photographer David Levene and I could see, though, was snow. On the last leg of our journey across the south we had fought for 17 hours through a snowstorm, winding our way from central Tennessee into increasingly treacherous and icy Appalachian mountains, and finally to Charlottesville, Virginia, home of Monticello. Virginia is one of six southern states – including Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee – that have shifted their primary voting forward to participate in the first ever southern Super Tuesday. Our road trip had taken us to each of them. Virginia is, literally, the birthplace of the American presidency – eight of the nation’s leaders have come from here – so Monticello seemed like a fitting destination. Instead we found a gate, and a field of snow. David, who is British, seemed especially let down. “Hey, look,” I offered, digging into my pocket. “It’s on the nickel.” Then we remembered another, even bigger, dome and columns. The University of Virginia is known here as “Mr Jefferson’s University” and, like Monticello, he designed its rotunda in his favorite style, inspired by his time in Europe as US minister to France in the 1780s. Moreover, the rotunda housed a life-sized statue of Jefferson himself. After a perilous drive, and an even more slippery walk, we arrived on the university’s grand central lawn. Classes had been dismissed for the day, and collections of students had gathered on the lawn to throw snowballs, or frisbees, or take pictures. One knot of students wore bathrobes and flip-flops. Their lips were blue, but they swore they were having fun. “It’s not so bad,” said Trevor Lane, his ankles turning pink. The University of Virginia is a top research center, and home to some of the brightest students in the US. Its law and business schools are world renowned, and companies founded by former UVA students generate more than $1.5tn in annual revenue. It seemed like a fine place to measure the direction US politics might take in the coming years. “Who here plans to vote on Super Tuesday?” Almost everyone raised a hand. A dozen or so gloveless, frozen hands. “How many of you support Donald Trump?” Zero hands. “What about Ted Cruz?” Zero hands. No surprises so far – Trump and Cruz aren’t known for their love among university students. “Hillary Clinton?” Just one or two hands. Interesting. UVA students are clearly feeling the Bern, then. “Bernie Sanders?” Still just one or two hands. Only a few of them supported any of the leading candidates. So for whom will the majority of them vote? A tall, dark-haired student named Sasan Mousavi offered: “I like Vermin Supreme.” Vermin Supreme is an anarchist candidate, best known – to the degree he is known – for wearing a boot for a hat, and promising a free pony for every American. Trevor Lane, the pink-ankled man whose open robe revealed a furry chest, was one of the few who said he didn’t plan to vote at all. Why? “I just don’t think I will,” he said with a shrug. The robed students clustered together for a photo in front of the rotunda. “The rotunda just says Jefferson,” said Taylor Henkel, the group’s photographer. But the rotunda was half-covered in scaffolding and plastic sheets. And the grand statue of Jefferson was nowhere to be found. “It’s been moved,” one of the students said. We stomped the length of the white lawn, looking for the famous effigy. We got word it had been moved to a library, but when we got there a couple of university staffers said no, the library was closed. And they didn’t think the statue was there anyway. Finally we tried the unmarked door of a small side room. It was open. Inside the room there were two silent, life-sized figures. The first was Jefferson, standing immortal in his marble form, in exile from his usual place of grandeur in the rotunda. The second was Jackie Akunda, a young black woman, studying in a chair under Jefferson’s gaze. She had a computer in her lap and a cup of coffee in one hand. She looked up and smiled. At Monticello, historians recently expanded the house tour to include the quarters of Sally Hemings, the slave who bore at least a half dozen of Jefferson’s children. It’s inescapable that this young politics major, Akunda, who was born in Kenya, has much less in common with Thomas Jefferson than she does his human property. Akunda is herself a lesson in modern politics; a living, breathing, study in the shift in American attitudes about our presidents. In the beginning they were Great Men, politically assailable only in theory, and personally assailable not at all. This model held for almost two centuries, through John Kennedy, whose place of death marked the beginning of this journey through the south. But soon after, presidents began to shrink in stature until they were merely men, whose political power became limited and whose personal lives were laid open for every voter to examine. So the reputations of living presidents – say, William Jefferson Clinton – never achieve a sterling sheen. And the reputations of past presidents, like Jefferson, have become tarnished. “Not tarnished enough,” Akunda said. Who, then, would she vote for among the current offering of presidential contenders? She thought a long while. “If you had asked me a few years ago, I would have been so excited,” she said. “I would have seen myself, by this point, volunteering for some Hillary Clinton campus organization. But I would never do that now. I don’t think my friends would either. Our disillusionment came once we learned enough to understand that neither side is going to make a real difference.” That’s why the robed students on the lawn all felt an obligation to say yes, they will vote. But they had no enthusiasm for any of the candidates. Left and right don’t matter any more, Akkunda said. Clinton and Sanders to the left. Cruz and Trump to the right. That spectrum is outdated. Instead, America’s newest voters think of power in terms of concentric circles. There are only inside and outside. “Do you need the establishment to continue standing?” she asked. “Or do you need the establishment to crumble? I wondered whether a young, 21st century Tommy Jefferson would agree with her. He had a revolutionary streak, after all. “Ironic, isn’t it?” she said. |