Anybody who’s seen photos taken by the Library’s Digital Production Technical Lead Eze Amos knows what a talented photographer he is. His work is regularly featured in C-ville Weekly and Edible Blue Ridge, and his images have been published by the Washington Post, CNN, AP, and Reuters.

On September 26, 2018 the C-ville Weekly featured Amos’ photo essay of a Charlottesville summer, mostly people on the downtown mall—kids, dogs, fiddle and guitar players, lovers, people alone, in groups, in bars, dining at cafes, living ordinary moments of a summer captured in time.

However, other photos tell of another summer in 1898 when a white mob savagely murdered a black man, John Henry James. Eze Amos and two other Library staffers—Resident Librarian Sony Prosper and Fine Arts evening manager Trayc Freeman—took to the road in July with other area residents on a Charlottesville pilgrimage to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, AL. They carried part of Charlottesville with them: a jar of earth from the site where James was killed, to be added to the memorial’s monument to victims of lynching.

Images of the pilgrimage along with others of activities commemorating the deadly racial violence of August 12 a year ago emphasize how far Charlottesville has yet to travel from the violence of 1898.

For more on Eze Amos, check out the article on his photo exhibit “Eze Amos: Cville People Everyday.”