› Charlottesville violence revives painful past for minorities,

Bernard Lafayette fought to end segregation during the civil rights movement. But after watching events in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend and hearing President Donald Trump blame both sides for the deadly violence, he realized changing laws did not change enough hearts and minds.

“It was below the surface,” said Lafayette, the 77-year-old chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “It was always there. It never left. People are coming out again and expressing their racist feelings.”

Minorities who came to the United States in search of a better life or who fought for equality were dispirited to see their fellow citizens fighting to preserve the legacy of the Confederacy and displaying Nazi symbols. And they said Trump’s response to the deadly violence only fanned racial flames.

Trump’s initial statements Saturday blamed violence on “many sides.” Two days later, he condemned white supremacists. On Tuesday, he lashed out at the counter-protesters who had been in Charlottesville. He also questioned whether removing public tributes to Confederate figures would result in similar treatment for statues of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson — both slave owners.

On the day of the Virginia rally, Lafayette was in Lowndes County, Ala., marking the anniversary of the death of Jonathan Daniels, a white civil rights volunteer who gave his life to save 17-year-old black girl Ruby Sales. Lafayette, who worked alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was stunned to see young whites marching with torches and swastikas in 2017.

To him, it was a sad reminder that the racist attitudes of the past have stubbornly persisted despite the progress of the past half century. Trump, he said, does not understand the counterprotesters. “The people who had weapons, who were geared up for violence, were the other side,” Lafayette said.

Rabbi Joshua Stanton of East End Temple in Manhattan is the grandson of refugees from Germany. As he watched the bloodshed in Charlottesville, his pulse raced and his stomach clenched. He tried to make sense of images more reminiscent of the 1930s, when his grandfather — now 95 — left Berlin after a night of anti-Semitic violence known as Kristallnacht in November 1938.

“The imagery and the salutes and the chants, quite literally from Nazi Germany, are intended to scare my grandfather. They’re intended to scare me as a rabbi and a Jewish person. They’re intended to scare people of color, and they’re intended to suggest that somehow we don’t have a place in the United States,” said Stanton, 31.