For decades, seven portraits have hung along the back wall of the larger of two circuit courtrooms in Danville, looking down on jury trials from behind the gallery. Now, there are only six.
A portrait of Archibald Aiken, the segregationist judge who presided over the trials of hundreds of civil rights protesters in the 1960s, was removed last week at the request of Lee Smallwood, a deputy public defender in Danville.
Aiken, who died in 1971, is no longer a well-known figure in the city. But Smallwood was familiar with Aiken’s reputation and discriminatory courtroom practices: The judge had barred the public from attending trials, excluded Black residents from juries, kept armed policemen in the courtroom — and even carried a gun into the courtroom himself.
And as information about Aiken and his methods has become more available to the public — including through a recent Cardinal News story — Smallwood said he’s grown concerned about how the judge’s likeness in the courtroom would impact trials.
[In 1963, Black Danville residents took to the streets for months to peacefully protest segregation. They were confronted by the police, often violently, and they faced criminal trials before white juries and a white judge who fought against integration. Until recently, many of their stories were passed over by institutional historians. Read Cardinal News’ coverage of the civil rights movement and its aftermath.]
“This portrait was literally hanging closest to the jury for everybody to see, and I think when people are attuned to that, it can have a chilling effect,” Smallwood said. “It’s just not a risk that I feel can be taken.”
Presiding Judge Joseph Milam granted Smallwood’s motion and ordered the portrait removed, at least temporarily, from the large courtroom where most jury trials are held. Smallwood is now working to create a committee that will decide which portraits, if any, should stay or go — including Aiken’s.
This week wasn’t the first time Smallwood thought about asking to have Aiken’s image taken down, he said.
“I have long contemplated filing a motion asking for the portrait to be removed,” he said. “But I’ve felt that what I would likely hear is that nobody knows anything about that.”
Many people, even in Danville, are unaware of the details of the city’s civil rights movement of 1963, which was met with fierce opposition and police brutality. This is in large part because of a lack of thorough coverage of the movement at the time, and a lack of meaningful acknowledgement from the city in the following decades.
Likely even fewer people know about Aiken and his methods during the civil rights court proceedings, which lasted for years even after the movement ended.
More than 200 defendants, almost all of whom were Black, were tried by Aiken on a host of charges including contempt, trespassing, disorderly conduct, assault, parading without a permit and resisting arrest. Most of these charges came under the umbrella of violating an injunction, issued by Aiken, that limited the scope of public demonstrations.
The judge had earned a reputation as a segregationist due to his opposition to public school integration, even before the civil rights movement. This reputation grew during the movement, sparking both praise and backlash. A bridge in Danville remains named after Aiken today.
Some who are aware of these stories don’t want to see them brought up again.
“There’s a real pragmatism in this community in terms of, ‘That’s in the past, it’s best not to stir it up,’” Smallwood said.
Smallwood understands this perspective, he said, but as the general public becomes more knowledgeable about the civil rights movement and about Aiken, he started to think about the effect it would have in the courtroom.
The Danville Historical Society, which has a lot of material about Aiken, is more accessible to the public than ever before, making it easier for residents to learn about him.
“What I’m concerned about is the type of trial my clients can get,” Smallwood said. “If there is something that, by and large, the public doesn’t know anything about, that’s one thing.”
But if there’s increased information available about Aiken online, and if people start to learn more about him, that’s another thing, he said.
Though his priority is making sure his clients get a fair trial, Smallwood said that he’s also in favor of “righting past wrongs,” and that the removal of Aiken’s portrait might work toward that end.
Milam was receptive to his request, Smallwood said, and immediately removed the portrait, which hung alongside six others in the larger of the two circuit courtrooms in Danville’s courthouse.
Similar conversations about portraits in Virginia courthouses have popped up across the state in recent years.
In 2015, then-Judge Martin Clark, who is now retired, ordered the removal of a portrait of Jeb Stuart, a Confederate States Army general during the Civil War, from a Patrick County courtroom.
These conversations became more prevalent in 2020, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, Smallwood said.
That year, judges in Louisa County and Fairfax County ordered portraits of Robert E. Lee removed.
“In Fairfax, they actually removed all of the portraits of all of the judges from the courtroom where they were having jury trials,” Smallwood said.
Seeing this happen in other localities, Smallwood was inclined to research the subjects of the portraits in Danville’s courtroom, specifically Aiken.
And now, Smallwood is putting together a committee that will help Milam and other judges make decisions about all of the portraits that hang in the courthouse. Among the other portraits is one of Aiken’s father, Archibald Aiken Sr., who was also a judge in Danville.
“[Milam] indicated that he wanted a group of smart people to give him guidance on what to do,” Smallwood said.
The committee will likely be a combination of local historians and local legal experts, he said, to make sure there’s an “interdisciplinary approach” to these discussions.
Milam declined to comment until official decisions are made about the portraits.
But Smallwood said he appreciated Milam’s attentiveness to an issue that he finds so important. “It’s just something that I couldn’t let lie dormant,” he said.
