Charlottesville Victims Use Post-Slavery KKK Law To Go After Hate Groups

A makeshift memorial of flowers and a photo of victim Heather Heyer sits in Charlottesville, Va., on Aug. 13, 2017. Heyer died when a car rammed into a group of people who were protesting white supremacists who had gathered in the city for a rally.

Steve Helber / AP

Liz Sines happened to be near campus that night, so she was among the first to see the hundreds of young men who stormed the University of Virginia lawn. They marched in the darkness, tiki torches illuminating their faces as they chanted ugly slurs: “Jews will not replace us!”

Sines said the chaos of that weekend in Charlottesville, Va., two years ago this month means that some memories are blurry. Others, she said, are so vivid she couldn’t forget them if she tried. There was the fiery arrival of the white nationalists that first night; violent clashes the next day, with activists opposing them; and then the horrifying sound of a car coming down a hill and into the crowd where Sines was standing.

She realized it wasn’t an accident when she saw the driver back up to roll over more bodies.