Healing Charlottesville

Letter to mayor Daugherty to investigate urban renewal.

Monday 5 June 2000

Virginia Daugherty, Mayor
Charlottesville, Virginia

I would like to express a few principles I hope will guide us in the 21st century.   They were hotly debated in the 18th century.

  1. It is not eminent domain to take private property into public custody and then sell it back to the private sector.
  2. It is not eminent domain to convert residential property to residential property, or to convert business property to business property.
  3. It is not eminent domain to take property for a non-public, non-civic use.

  1. Property cannot be taken by referendum.
  2. The majority cannot vote to disempower a minority.
  3. The Constitution exists to protect individual liberty and property against majority opinion.

To take property for a non-civic use without the consent of the property owner:

  1. The owner must first be accused publicly of a crime.
  2. The accused owner is assumed to be innocent until a judge or jury decides guilt.
  3. Assets cannot be seized or frozen until a guilty verdict has been rendered.
  4. The accused has the right to remain silent.   That silence cannot be construed as guilt.
  5. The burden of proof is on the accuser.
  6. The accused property owner has the right to cross-examine his accusers.
  7. The accused is entitled to a speedy trial, but also a reasonable to assemble a legal defense.
  8. If the owner cannot afford an attorney, a judge will appoint one at taxpayer expense.
  9. The amount of liberty or property taken by the court should fit the crime.

This complicated procedure is called due process.   It has been the supreme law of this nation since 1787.

Madame Mayor, I regret to inform you that Vinegar Hill and Garrett Street were destroyed for a non-public use, without the consent of property owners, and without due process of law.   Today that property is not even under public ownership.   Justice delayed is justice denied.

Therefore, please begin an investigation of the legality of urban renewal and neighborhood revitalization before anymore witnesses die or move away and before anymore documents are lost or destroyed.

Let us heal these wounds.   Let us make sure these atrocities never happen again.

Thank you,
Blair Hawkins

Upon completion of the speech, applause reverberated in a council chamber packed with black people.   The mayor has not spoken on the matter.   Newspapers did not record the history.

To borrow a phrase from Thomas Paine, "fear reveals itself in anger."   The people are angry because they are afraid.

Note of irony: the school I attended on Garrett Street was the Hope House for preschoolers.

January 31, 2002

Posted 10 Feb 2002

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