The Washington Post - USA (2021-10-27)

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 27 , 2021. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/LOCAL EZ SU B

JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON

Readers share their

stories of airport security

workers mistaking their

treats for threats. B3

THE DISTRICT

Howard University’s

president says a protest

occupying a student

center “must end.” B8

OBITUARIES

Mort Sahl, 94, set the bar

for future humorists with

his fearless brand of

55 ° 64 ° 68 ° 62 ° political comedy. B6

8 a.m. Noon 4 p.m. 8 p.m.

High today at

approx. 2 p.m.

69

°

Precip: 10%

Wind: WNW

15-25 mph

Hance on a horse and rode out of

the St. Mary’s County town in

Southern Maryland in search of

an alternate spot and suitable

tree, according to old newspaper

accounts.

On Monday, the county will

unveil a historical marker out-

side the jail where the mob seized

Hance, to remind the community

of the murderous epidemic of

lynching that once spread across

large parts of the country.

“We’re not above it,” said Jan-

ice T. Walthour, first vice presi-

dent of the St. Mary’s Coun ty

NAACP. “It happened right here

on the ground, in Leonardtown,

in St. Mary’s Coun ty.”

SEE RETROPOLIS ON B2

BY MICHAEL E. RUANE

The lynch mob came for Benja-

min Hance after midnight,

breaking down the door to the

brick-and-stone jail in Leonard-

town, Md., and

dragging the

African American oysterman

down the steps from his second-

floor cell.

They marched him to a locust

tree in the courthouse yard and

were about to hang him. But a

doctor who lived nearby came

and asked whether they might do

it somewhere else. The doctor’s

wife was very sick, and he feared

the scene might disturb her.

The mob relented. It tied

RETROPOLIS

A Maryland l ynching memorialized

Historical marker in St. Mary’s County recounts the killing of an oysterman by a White mob in 1887

New cases in region

Through 5 p.m. Tuesday, 1,936 new

coronavirus cases were reported in

Maryland, Virg inia and the District,

bringing the total number of cases

in the region to 1,541,110.

D.C. MD. VA.

+40+ 59 7+1,299

63,919 557,192 919,999

Coronavirus-related deaths

As of 5 p.m. Tuesday:

D.C. MD.* VA.

+1 +16+ 48

1,18710,827 13,793

* Includes probable covid-19 deaths.

During a recent

drive through

Southwest

Virginia, I came

to a region that is

credited with

giving birth to

country music.

The se tting was

the Blue Ridge Mountains. In the

early 19th century, Native

Americans and people of

European and African descent

settled along those iconic ridges,

and eventually began blending

cultures and traditions.

The Scotch Irish had migrated

with their fiddles. The Germans

with their harmonicas. Africans,

some who had escaped

enslavement by using the

Underground Railroad that

wound through Appalachia,

settled in and began hollowing

out gourds to make an

instrument native to their

homeland. It became what we

now call the banjo.

Anglo-Celtic soloists and Irish

SEE MILLOY ON B2

More of us need a lesson

in country music history

Courtland

Milloy

BY JUSTIN GEORGE

Days after a train derailment

triggered a federal investigation,

Metro was aware of wheel assem-

bly defects in two rail cars that

continued picking up passengers,

officials said. The cars stayed in

service until independent safety

inspectors learned of Metro’s over-

sight, then ordered the two cars

and the rest of the series out of

service.

The Oct. 17 incident and the

compressed timeline in which the

Washington Metrorail Safety

Commission ordered the suspen-

sion of about 60 percent of Metro

rail cars were revealed Tuesday

during the commission’s monthly

meeting. The agency monitors

Metrorail safety and was created

by Congress in 2017 after safety

failures.

The details raise questions

about the urgenc y, awareness and

response of Metro toward wheel

assembly failures that have been

found in more than 50 of its latest

model rail cars over four years,

including one car that went off the

tracks Oct. 12 outside the Arling-

ton Cemetery station. No one was

injured and 187 passengers were

evacuated, but the incident

sparked a N ational Transporta-

tion Saf ety Board investig ation.

NTSB officials have said the de-

fect — in which the distance be-

tween wheels widens outward on

their axles — could have resulted

in a catastrophic accident.

Safety commission chief execu-

tive David L. Mayer said Tuesday

that Metro told the commission

and NTSB about the defect for the

first time while it was conducting

emergency inspections of all 748

of its 7000-series cars, with the

goal of clearing them for the Mon-

day commute on Oct. 18.

The transit agency told investi-

SEE METRO ON B4

Cars with known defects carried riders

NTSB STEPPED IN AFTER METRO’S OVERSIGHT

Commission orders staff probe into procedural lapses

PHOTOS BY KAREN STONE

BY ELLIE SILVERMAN

charlottesville — From his

bench in the federal courtroom,

Judge Norman K. Moon ques-

tioned the potential jurors one by

one, asking their opinions on

Black Lives Matter and antifas-

cists.

He dug into the answers they

gave on the jury questionnaire,

which had included the subject of

monuments to the Confederacy:

Were these statues of Robert E.

Lee — and others who defended

slavery — relics of Southern

pride? Were they historical mon-

uments? Did they represent sym-

bols of racism?

Four years after the events of

the Unite the Right rally weekend

— which was related to a permit-

ted demonstration to protest city

plans to remove a statue of Con-

federate Gen. Robert E. Lee —

white supremacists have re-

turned to Charlottesville, this

time for a trial in which a jury will

decide whether the rally organiz-

ers conspired to foment racial

violence.

From the trial’s opening, a

challenge became clear: How to

find an impartial jury when the

defendants are some of the na-

tion’s most visible white suprem-

acists?

The jury questionnaire reads

like a culture-war bingo, with

questions on statues of Confeder-

ate leaders, far-left anti-fascist

activists and Black Lives Matter.

Not even the judge seemed to

unders tand the antifa move-

ment, questioning if it is some-

thing people sign up for. Potential

jurors tripped over terminology,

conflated groups and interjected

their political views into proceed-

ings, displaying how divided the

country is on the subject of rac-

ism and how the understanding

of what it means to be impartial

varies from person to person.

In a c ase that centers on highly

volatile and well-known events,

legal experts said it would be

difficult to find jurors who do not

have strong feelings. And when it

comes to issues such as race and

white supremacy, they said,

claiming to be neutral is also a

bias.

Less than a day after the dead-

ly Unite the Right rally, conspira-

cy theorist Alex Jones of Infowars

began circulating an alternative

reality, arguing the horrendous

weekend was a plot from the far

left. The same type of baseless

claim has popped up in the after-

math of the Jan. 6 attack on the

U.S. Capitol.

“People that express neutrality

regarding issues that practically

demand a point of view are them-

selves expressing a point of view,”

said Lolita Buckner Inniss, the

dean of the University of Colora-

SEE CHARLOTTESVILLE ON B5

Picking

Va. j ury

is a tall

order

Experts say it’s difficult

to find impartial panel

for Unite the Right trial

One side of the historical marker being erected in Leonardtown, Md., details t he 1887 lynching of Benjamin Hance, an African

American man, while the other side of the plaque informs readers about the lynchings that took place in the United States.

BY TEO ARMUS

AND SEAN SULLIVAN

President Biden returned to

the campaign trail for Terry

McAuliffe on Tuesday, urging Vir-

ginia voters to back the former

governor in the tight race for his

old job against Republican Glenn

Youngkin.

“You all know the stakes,” Biden

told the crowd during a chilly

evening at Arlington’s Virginia

Highlands Park. “You don ’t have

to wonder what kind of governor

Terry will be, because you know

what a great governor he was.”

The rally, featuring a who’s who

of top Democratic elected officials

from Northern Virginia, marked

the second time this year that

Biden had crossed the Potomac to

headline a rally alongside McAu-

liffe, a longtime friend.

But with national attention on

Virginia just a week before the

state conducts the first real elec-

toral test of the Biden presidency,

the stage was bigger Tuesday, and

the stakes were higher.

Already, national Democratic

Party strategists are looking to

Virginia as an indicator of the

party’s chances in next year’s mid-

term congressional elections —

and of voter attitudes toward

Biden. After Biden retained

strong popularity during his first

six months in office, his approval

numbers started slipping in Au-

gust amid a chaotic withdrawal

from Afghanistan and a Capitol

Hill log jam over his domestic

agenda.

McAuliffe himself has said that

Biden is unpopular. He has tried

to distance himself from the presi-

dent in some ways and called on

Democrats to set aside their dis-

agreements and push through a

bipartisan infrastructure bill.

As the two men took the stage on

Tuesday night, that goal remained

SEE BIDEN ON B4

Biden makes final push for McAuliffe