"This Little Light Of Mine" & Other Songs & Chants Heard At The August 12, 2017 Charlottesville, Va. Counterprotest Rally & Marches

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post documents the performance of the Gospel song "This Little Light Of Mine" and other songs and chants that were sung or chanted to protest the Neo-Nazi, White nationalist march in Charlottesville, Virginia (August 12, 2017).

This post is part of an ongoing pancocojams series on protests songs and chants. Click the "African American protest chants" and the "protest songs and chants" tags for other pancocojams posts in this series.

The content of this post is presented for historical and cultural purposes.

Thanks to all those who have worked and those who are now working for equality and justice for all.

My condolences to the family and friends of Heather Heyer and all others who have lost their lives or have been injured in the Charlotteville, Virginia anti-racism protest marches.
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Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/11/this-little-light-of-mine-information.html for a pancocojams post on the Gospel song "This Little Light Of Mine".
Here's a brief excerpt from that post from http://tincanland.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/let-history-shine-on-this-little-light-of-ours/
" "This Little Light of Mine was written in the 1920s as a song for children by a white northern pastor/music teacher, Harry Dixon Loes. Inspired by one or more of several Gospels which reference the Lord�s shining light, it became a staple of Sunday School teaching across the U.S.

It was in 1952 when The Ward Singers, legendary pioneers of the modern gospel sound, turned it into a �gospel� song for adults. Soon after, Zilphia Horton adapted it further still and taught it to Pete Seeger (as she did with We Shall Overcome) and other folk singers of the 1950s. It became a Civil Rights anthem, generally assumed to be a symbolic old slave song from the south.

Not surprisingly, This Little Light of Mine can be performed in pretty much any manner you please. I�ve found over 30 distinct versions.

Some of the names will be familiar (Brenda Lee, Etta James, Neko Case, Odetta, Roger McGuinn, The Seekers, Sam Cooke, Son House)...

No matter who is singing, This Little Light of Mine remains a most powerful song of personal freedom, and no matter the style, some of the child-like jubilation and wonder found in that original children�s hymn still shines through every time."

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ARTICLE AND BLOG EXCERPTS
These excerpts are given in no particular order and are numbered for referencing purposes only.

Excerpt #1:
From https://forum.astro.com/cgi/forum.cgi?num=1502594398/0 [page 1]
pisceskim
Re: White Supremacists Riot in Virgnia
� Reply #10 - on: 13.08.2017 at 10:46 [UT+1] �
..."I did hear, and the cameras captured, though, for a short time, some of the Ministers and Clergy who came to march peaceably, singing together; a gospel song, the riots and the violence overtook the song. Couldn't tell you what it was they were singing; they were overshadowed and out-rioted I guess"....

**
https://forum.astro.com/cgi/forum.cgi?num=1502594398/60
Mercurian
Re: White Supremacists Riot in Virgnia
� Reply #65 - on: Yesterday at 15:30 [UT+1] �[August 18, 2017]
"The first chart posted is meaningful and interpretations on this thread have been really interesting. For people in Charlottesville, though, the event actually began the night before. There was an important church service at St. Paul's Episcopal Church near the University of Virginia that was intended to inspire everyone to strong and peaceful witness against white supremacy the next day. It began at 7:30pm. It was an interfaith service with many clergy in attendance and the large church was so packed many people were turned away.

While that was happening, the Nazis staged a counter demonstration by marching with torches across the UVA grounds. When they arrived opposite the church in front of the symbolic Rotunda they surrounded a small group of UVA students, who were holding a banner that read, "UVA students against white supremacy." The Nazis threw lighter fluid at the students and hit them with their tiki torches. This was widely misrepresented in the media along the lines of "then the two groups ran into each other and fighting broke out." Katie Couric, who was there, tweeted a better picture of what happened: http://theweek.com/speedreads/718085/white-nationalists-march-chant-nazi-slogan- charlottesville

Meanwhile, in the church at the end of the service, people were told it wasn't safe to go out for a few minutes and then the police allowed them to leave only by the back door.

I'm not a mundane astrologer, so I wouldn't know how to create an event chart for that night, but that's when it all began.

On a more positive note, one reason I think it might be interesting to look at it from the church service is that I feel the events of the weekend have powerful spiritual potential. The clergy at the rally were singing, "this little light of mine," which seems prophetic now after more than 700 candlelit vigils for Charlottesville have been held around the world.* The candlelit vigil at the University of Virginia on the 16th, after Heather Heyer's** stirring memorial service, also conveyed a sense of peace and resilience."
-snip-
*I added italics to highlight this sentence.

**A Nazi-sympathizer drove his car into a crowd of anti-racism counter-demonstrators who were protesting the white supremacist rally, killing Heather Heyer and injuring more than a dozen others. That driver was later arrested and charged with second degree murder.

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Excerpt #2
From http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/torch-wielding-white-supremacists-march-university-virginia-n792021
August 12, 2017 "Charlottesville White Nationalist Rally Violence Prompts State of Emergency" by Marianna Sotomayor, Phil McCausland, and Ariana Brockingtom
...."Supporters gathered in Emancipation Park Saturday morning in anticipation of a noon rally held by "Unite the Right." The aim of the rally was to protest the removal of a statue honoring Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The park was formerly known as Lee Park.

State police and members of the Virginia National Guard surrounded the park after McAuliffe declared a state of emergency and the city of Charlottesville declared the alt-right protest an unlawful assembly � effectively cancelling the demonstration before its planned start time.

Later in the day, a car plowed into a group of counter-protesters, witnesses said. Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas said a 32-year-old woman crossing at an intersection was struck and killed, a suspected driver was arrested.

[..]

White nationalists, as well as apparent neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members, were met in opposition by clergy members and other groups, who stood in a line singing "This Little Light of Mine" to drown out the profanity and slurs.*

"Love has already won. We have already won," the counter-protesters responded early Saturday.�

But as the violence intensified with shoving and punching, demonstrators covered their mouths after tear gas was apparently released into the crowd.

Two people were also treated for serious but non-life-threatening injuries near Emancipation Park, the city of Charlottesville tweeted, as tensions flared with back-and-forth shouting and physical posturing.

A large group of counter-protesters wore black shirts and masks and carried shields, yelling to the white nationalists: "We have replaced you. Strong, united, interracial crew."...
-snip-
*I added italics to highlight this sentence.

In addition to Heather Heyer, two Virginia state troopers- H. Jay Cullen and Berke M.M. Bates -were also killed when their helicopter which was monitoring the protest crashed.

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Excerpt #3
From http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/charlottesville-white-supremacist-rally-erupts-in-violence-w497446 "After Charlottesville Rally Ends in Violence, Alt-Right Vows to Return"

White supremacists and counterprotestors clashed in Virginia on Saturday, resulting in one death and dozens of injuries
By Sarah Posner, August 13, 2017
"In Charlottesville on Saturday, after the city council and Virginia governor declare a state of emergency and police disband the Unite the Right rally organized by white supremacists, I am following a growing group of demonstrators against the rally, who have begun marching east down Water Street, the southern perimeter of the city's historic downtown mall. Just a few blocks from Emancipation Park, where the white supremacist rally had been scheduled, the marchers appear nonviolent but raucous, chanting, "Whose streets? Our streets!" and holding signs like, "Nazi carpetbaggers go home."
Moments later, the crowd hears a loud, sharp thud. People start screaming and running north, up 3rd and 4th streets to Main Street, a seven-block pedestrian-only stretch of restaurants, shops, and bars.

[...]

On Saturday, Richard Spencer, the president of the white nationalist National Policy Institute, who popularized the term "alt-right" to describe a movement that advocates for a "white ethno-state," depicts the Friday night torch march as an "amazing, spectacular demonstration" (Steve Bannon, Trump's top strategist, has boasted that as head of Breitbart News, he provided "the platform for the Alt-Right.") The Alt-Right has marched with torches before, at a previous demonstration in Charlottesville in May. "I love the torches," Spencer tells Rolling Stone. "It's spectacular; it's theatrical and mystical and magical and religious, even."

[...]

Despite Spencer's claims that his group was attacked by members of Antifa, a loose, anarchist movement of anti-fascist protesters that has clashed with the alt-right in other cities, many of the rally opponents in Charlottesville were religious liberals, Black Lives Matter activists and others who showed up to protest racism and white supremacy. The visible religious presence includes clergy and congregants who march, offer people food and water, and set up space at the First United Methodist Church for people to seek respite. In the parking lot, people link arms and sing, "We Shall Overcome."*...

And while there were certainly Antifa protesters who carried sticks and clubs, others were not armed, and say they were attacked by white supremacists. Renee, who declines to give her last name, has a long, deep vertical gash on her forehead, which she tells me she received by being "clocked" by a wooden shield wielded by a "Nazi;" she describes a shield like the one carried by the Vanguard America group.

John Carico, and Antifa organizer from Chattanooga, Tennessee, who is with Renee, has for four years protested outside the annual meeting of American Renaissance, a white supremacist group that rents a rural Tennessee venue for its conference, says he was also attacked. He says his group was chanting, "no hate, no KKK, no fascist USA." The group that attacked them, he says, was chanting, "Jews will not replace us."

This weekend in Charlottesville appeared to be the largest � and most violent � public gathering the white supremacist alt-right has had thus far. But Trump, who reportedly thrills to chaos and conflict, can't muster the words to condemn racism, white nationalism, or the alt-right. No surprise there � he did the same thing during his campaign, winking and nodding with the Alt-Right through tweets, retweets, dog-whistling, and half-hearted disavowals.

In other words, Trump is the president he signaled he'd be � the one who emboldened the alt-right, and then stood by while they wreaked havoc on America.
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*I added italics to highlight that sentence.

�Antifa� = antifascists protestors

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Excerpt #4:
From https://www.vox.com/2017/8/12/16138460/charlottesville-unite-right-rally-violence-protests
"Charlottesville Unite the Right rally: what�s happened so far"
Updated by Libby Nelson and Dara Lind Aug 12, 2017, 3:29pm EDT
"A planned Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, drew nationwide attention as neo-Nazis with torches marched on the University of Virginia campus Friday night and officials called for a state of emergency amid protests Saturday morning.

Many Unite the Right protesters wore white nationalist and Nazi paraphernalia, a militia arrived armed with heavy weaponry and some individuals wore Ku Klux Klan imagery. Former KKK leader David Duke attended.

Counter-protesters were out in force, too, chanting progressive slogans and singing civil rights-era songs.*

Police called the protest an unlawful gathering and attempted to disburse the white nationalists and counter protesters from a central location. Both sides began to march throughout Charlottesville, despite skirmishes and the use of tear gas.

Several counter-protesters were injured when a car rammed into a crowd of them marching through the streets. The car fled the scene.

The rally was ostensibly a protest against removing a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a Charlottesville park. From its original base of right-wing �patriot� groups, the rally started drawing a growing number of neo-Nazis � and become a flashpoint for a resurgent, outspoken white nationalism that drew strength from the campaign and presidency of Donald Trump.

[...]

Friday night, the night before the planned rally was scheduled to begin, a group of about 100 white nationalists marched on the University of Virginia carrying tiki torches and chanting Nazi slogans. Police dispersed the crowd, and one protester was arrested.

Saturday morning, the scheduled rally began at Emancipation Park, where white nationalists; counter-protesters, including church groups; and unofficial �militias� carrying weapons and dressed in camouflage assembled. Fights broke out between rallygoers and counter-protesters

[...]

Police declared the gathering an unlawful assembly. Not long after the rally began, Charlottesville declared a local emergency, and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe declared a statewide state of emergency. McAuliffe already had the state National Guard on standby, according to ABC News.

As the rally dispersed, white nationalist groups went on the march through Charlottesville, chanting anti-Semitic, anti-immigration, and racist slogans � including �one people, one nation, end immigration, according to the Washington Post�s Joe Heim. They targeted spectators specifically for abuse"...
-snip-
*I added italics to highlight these sentences.

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Excerpt #5
WARNING: This post includes profanity in documenting White nationalist signage.

From https://www.indy100.com/article/charlottesville-virginia-far-right-protests-clergy-religious-singing-white-supremacists-7890176
Anti-racism protesters sing 'This Little Light of Mine' in front of armed white supremacists
Posted August 12, 2017 by Narjas Zatat in videos
..."Huffington Post reporter Christopher Mathias captured the moment counter-protesters held hands and sang �This Little Light of Mine� to white supremacists marching by

Joe Heim ? @JoeHeim
Faith groups at Emancipation park singing "this little light of mine." White supremacists chanting 'blood and soil'.
9:31 AM - Aug 12, 2017

[embedded video]

The remarkable moment left a mark on people:

I'm Peachy. @rebmy75
Replying to @letsgomathias
I am so thankful for their strong presence. Hide it under a bushel ? No ! I'm gonna let it shine !! Amen !!
9:57 AM - Aug 12, 2017

[embedded video]

Many of the counter-protesters were clergymen and clergywomen:

12 Aug
Joe Heim ? @JoeHeim
Faith groups at Emancipation park singing "this little light of mine." White supremacists chanting 'blood and soil'. pic.twitter.com/EEs7HTKFwr
Follow
Sue Bingham @suebingham4
Love these clergy! All Respect.
10:18 AM - Aug 12, 2017"
-snip-
These two video clips are of mostly White protestors singing �This little light of mine�

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SHOWCASE VIDEO: How the Violence Unfolded in Charlottesville | The New York Times



The New York Times, Published on Aug 15, 2017

White nationalists and counterprotesters blamed each other and the police for the violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday. Amateur video verified by The New York Times paints a picture of how the events led to one death and multiple injuries.
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The line of counterprotestors singing "This Little Light Of Mine" is occurs around .43 in this video

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