The quiet strength of Charles Chestnut

A commissioner with deep roots in Alachua County chips away at racial injustice

Chesnut’s presence seems to life spirits at the Gainesville soil collection ceremony. (Nicole Guillen/Atrium)

This story is part of a two-article series about groundbreaking Alachua County Commissioners. Click here to discover how Mary Alford became Alachua County’s first openly LBGTQ commissioner.

November 4, 2021 | Story by Samantha Chery | Photos by Nicole Guillen

On a winter day in Newberry, a small crowd trudged through a field toward a sprawling oak tree. Gray skies loomed above, and eventually, God’s tears began to fall. Raincoats and jackets could not keep out the chill.

Charles Chestnut IV faced the crowd. Rain dampened the knees of his dark blue suit; a newsboy cap protected his face and paisley tie. No one asked him to arrive early that morning, but he did anyway to set up tables and folding chairs. He had helped gather everyone on this solemn day, in the shadows of a massive oak, to remember a dark day in Alachua County.

It was here, amid this field of venerable trees, that six people were lynched in August 1916. They went down in history as the Newberry Six, and they were among thousands of Black Americans who lost their lives in such a gruesome manner. During decades of racial terror that reigned in the Jim Crow South, more than 50 people were lynched in Alachua County alone.

Yet, this was not a history widely known around these parts.

Chestnut was keenly aware of the erasure. He stood here as a county commissioner, as a member of the Community Remembrance Project. And most importantly, as a Black man whose family had claimed these lands as home for many generations. Since 2019, Chestnut has helped lead the county’s truth and reconciliation efforts aimed at helping people heal from the scars of racial brutality.

Exactly what happened here may never be known, but by most accounts, the lynching took place after an all-white posse hunted down the friends and relatives of Boisey Long, a Black man accused of stealing hogs and killing the Newberry constable. The angry white mob shot and killed Jim Dennis and then hanged Long’s wife, Stella Young, Bert and Mary Dennis, Andrew McHenry and the Rev. Josh Baskin. Their bodies dangled from the branches of an oak tree before a jeering white crowd of 200. Long was convicted of murder and executed two months later.

That Chestnut was here to address the crowd on this sobering occasion should not have surprised anyone. He, after all, hailed from a family of civic engagement. And he had served as a public official since 2000, when he was first elected to the Gainesville City Commission.

Chestnut (center) did not want to draw attention to himself, despite having organized much of the ceremony. (Nicole Guillen/Atrium)

He walked up to the lectern, craned his neck to accommodate his towering height, put on his glasses and removed his pandemic face mask. Other speakers had been fiery — anger and sorrow and a thirst for justice filling their voices. But Chestnut looked serene, as he always did. He was not the kind of man who got rattled easily. He looked down at his speech and then out to the crowd. The audience stood with the resolve of soldiers, waiting for Chestnut’s remarks.

Chuck

Chestnut was elected to the Alachua County Commission in 2012. In that role, he goes by the nickname Chuck. Before that, he served in the Florida House of Representatives and as a Gainesville city commissioner.

Chestnut doesn’t say much at county meetings. His occasional “yea” will do. He doesn’t want to be known as the person who talks a lot but doesn’t have anything to say. If he has a problem, he’d rather speak to a staff member privately.

He’s mainly a man of action. His business neighbor and friend James Coats recalled a day four years ago when an elderly couple walked into the county administration building looking for help with an electric bill. Hurricane Irma had left East Gainesville with debris and damage, and their mailbox, which was where they received monthly checks, was one of the cyclone’s casualties. Without those checks, they wouldn’t be able to keep their lights on. The county had informed them it wasn’t responsible for fixing their problem. But Chestnut stepped in. He paid the bill outright.

It was one of Coats’ first memories of Chestnut; other community members share similar stories. He has paid other bills and bought school clothes, too. Yet, he’ll rarely bring these acts up in conversation or offer any details. Last year before COVID-19 erupted, he traveled three hours to surprise and comfort his friend and colleague Carl Smart at Smart’s mother’s funeral. Chestnut’s own mother passed away in 2009. He knows how emotionally taxing it can be to lose a loved one.

Perhaps that empathy stems from a lineage of public service. His father served as president of the NAACP Youth Council and was one of the county’s first Black school board members from 1976 to 1992, working to racially integrate the county’s schools. His stepmother, Cynthia Moore Chestnut, was the first Black woman to become a Gainesville city commissioner in 1987 and mayor of Gainesville in 1989.

Charles Chesnut’s job is more than a government position to him. His family history is interwoven with the county’s history. The Chestnuts settled in Gainesville long before the Newberry lynchings in 1916.

What it means to be a Chestnut

Chestnut has lived in Alachua County nearly all of his 59 years. Before him, five generations of Chestnuts had made their lives here.

In 1854, Chestnut’s great-great-great-grandparents, Johnson and Maria Chestnut, were brought here as enslaved people from Camden, South Carolina. At the time, they were two of 56 enslaved people owned by Serena Chesnut Haile. She possibly inherited them from her father, John Chesnut.

It’s not clear what life on the plantation was like for the Chestnuts. Without a written record, their hopes and dreams may never be discovered. They were property under chattel slavery, only known by their names and their forced servitude for the Haile family.

But county records and the Historic Haile Homestead, which is now a museum, give a few hints to what they did in life. Johnson labored as a carpenter and a craftsman. He made a baby crib that may have held the 14 Haile children who grew up in the house. He was so skilled that he could taper drawers with the perfection needed to slide and close with ease.

The Chestnuts, like other enslaved people, were freed after the Civil War. During Reconstruction, Johnson Chestnut served on the Gainesville City Commission from 1868 to 1869. He was among the legions of African American men who enjoyed newfound freedom to be politically involved, like Josiah T. Walls, the first Black congressman from Florida.

Johnson Chestnut and his wife, Maria, raised three sons: John, Lawrence and James. Lawrence and his wife, Lula, had seven children; one was named Charles, Chestnut’s great-grandfather, who was born in 1885. In 1914, along with Matthew E. Hughes, Charles Chestnut co-founded what is now the Chestnut Funeral Home, one of the oldest running African American-owned businesses in the county.

Chestnut, the commissioner, still works as an embalmer at the funeral home alongside his father, his best friend Nick Causey and Larry Saunders, a cousin.

He dedicated his life to the Chestnut craft. He studied mortuary science at Miami-Dade College and earned a degree in business administration at Bethune-Cookman University to prepare for the family business.

Chestnut’s work at the funeral home is yet another quiet way he helps people through a difficult time.

Through the funerals and burials, Chestnut remains immersed in ancestry. Especially at Black cemeteries.

At a remembrance ceremony in Newberry, a woman gazes at a painting of a large
oak tree. Six people were lynched from a tree like this in August 1916. (Nicole Guillen/Atrium)

That’s why remembering the Newberry lynching victims was so important to Chestnut. He knew this was an opportunity to finally respond to tragedy with grace and respect. To give the angry mob’s six victims a proper burial of sorts.

A true reckoning

In this Newberry field that became known as Lynch Hammock, Chestnut, the man of few words, began to speak.

“We are here to bring the community together and to have a real conversation about the history of lynching right here in Alachua County. We resolve to recognize and honor the victims of racial terror, recognizing the residual effects from the era and recognizing the results of systemic racism and racial disparity that still plagues our county and this country.”

A keyboard buzzed as a pastor sang “Amazing Grace.” On nearby tables, draped in midnight black, sat 13 empty jars — two for each of the six who were killed here and one for any unknown victims. They waited to be filled in a soil ceremony. The Newberry dirt, soaked with the blood and tears of the past, would make its way to The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. The soil collected from lynching sites all across America are displayed at the memorial.

The descendants of the lynching victims formed a line at the tables. One by one, they dropped upturned umbrellas, stretched out their hands for pumps of sanitizer and used plastic scoopers to shovel soil from the buckets to the marked jars.

Chestnut joined and playfully tugged at one woman’s red umbrella to say, “hello.”

He did not draw attention to himself, despite having organized much of the ceremony. Instead, he tucked himself away near the lectern. His presence alone seemed to lift spirits.

The sun shines over downtown Gainesville as people convene behind the county administration building for the Gainesville lynching ceremony. (Nicole Guillen/Atrium)

Looking forward

Weeks later, Chestnut prepared for yet another soil collection ceremony in Alachua. Then came other ceremonies and Juneteenth, a celebration of the day when enslaved people were freed.

His schedule was chock-full with the Community Remembrance Project, but he carved out extra time to prepare for the upcoming events. He wanted to get to know the descendants of the lynching victims on a personal level. He read the work of Black journalist Ida B. Wells to learn more.

He wanted to address what he considered modern-day lynchings. Studies have shown that Black people are disproportionately incarcerated in America and tend to receive more severe sentences than their white counterparts, even for nonviolent crimes. Within Alachua County, racial justice has moved at a sloth-like pace in Chestnut’s eyes. If he won the lottery today, he would use the money to develop predominantly Black East Gainesville. He wants affordable housing to actually be affordable for the poorest people in the county. He wants to lower unemployment rates and raise the minimum wage. He wants to end the economic disparities that stretch along racial lines. He wants to solve the societal problems that he believes stem from the legacy of slavery.

He perseveres with hope that his contributions will spur true racial equity for future generations: for his daughter, Ashlei, or his son, Charlie, even if he is no longer around to see it.

Chestnut’s neighbor Coats describes his friend as the Mr. Rogers of Alachua County. He’s the kind of guy who will buy you a coffee and ask you what’s wrong if you look like you’re having a bad day, Coats says. Chestnut’s not one to engage in foolishness, even when things go awry. Chestnut’s best friend, Nick Causey, likens Chestnut to a sponge: someone who soaks up love and then squeezes it out to those who need it most.

But if you ask Chestnut about himself, he won’t say much. He just wants to be remembered as a man of God who helped others.

Chesnut, a man of few words, has been speaking at Alachua County remembrance ceremonies for victims of lynching. (Nicole Guillen/Atrium)

Change is coming

On a recent Saturday afternoon, men dressed in tuxedos and gold ties rested in chairs lined up against the Chestnut Funeral Home hallway. They had just returned from the day’s funeral services.

Chestnut entered through the side door and greeted them. That morning, he was one of the only county officials who made the drive to rural Monteocha for a small soil collection ceremony.

Now that he was back, he asked Causey to make sure the pallbearers picked up their paychecks before they filed out one by one. Usually, they would have worked longer hours. But families were now choosing shorter, graveside funerals instead of traditional church services.

Over the years, Chestnut has noticed many changes in the funeral service field. Loved ones have asked for what used to be taboo in the Black community, like cremations and crowning ceremonies. But the family business has been slow to adapt, much to Chestnut’s frustration. He wants the century-old, mission-style funeral home on Gainesville’s Eighth Avenue to be fixed up and repurposed into an African American history museum. Then, the business could flourish in a newer, larger facility.

But Chestnut’s father, who owns the business, hasn’t expressed interest in innovation. He stalled the transition to the digital world and said “no” to an additional cemetery.

The funeral home has doubled as a community clubhouse for decades, but Chestnut fears it won’t be around for much longer if his dad doesn’t embrace young talent and implement fresh ideas soon.

Chestnut doesn’t want to resist change the way his father did. Instead, he’s been inspired by young people. He finds them to be more inclusive and more intolerant of injustice. They are, after all, the ones who will carry the mantle forward.

It has always pained him to learn of how white Americans treated Black people as less than human. He never understood that. But he takes heart in that at last, people are stopping now to ask how to right the wrongs of the past. At least they are uncovering the truth.

Perhaps one day, he thinks there won’t be a need for community remembrances. But until then, Chestnut will be there, listening.