CHARLOTTESVILLE

Was the horror show in Charlottesville fresh evidence that overt racism remains an issue for our country?

Or is it a terrible, but ultimately small blip in a nation where the issue of race has dominated the past and remains a key issue today?

Such questions loom as graphic scenes scrolled across television, computer and cellphone screens showing white nationalists on a rampage last Friday and Saturday in Charlottesville.

The shocking images showed people affiliated with the racist groups beating counterprotestors with clubs and Confederate flag poles, pepper-spraying others, marching with torches and chanting Nazi slogans, and equality supporters lashing back in an often chaotic melee.

And then in the ultimate expression of rage, an angry 20-year-old Ohio man, who joined in the white supremacists’ rally, deliberately drove his car into a crowd of people, killing 32-year-old paralegal Heather Heyer and injuring at least 19 others.

The man, James A. Fields Jr., is now jailed and facing second degree murder charges.

Two state troopers, Lt. Jay Cullen, 48, of Midlothian and Trooper Berke M.M. Bates of Quinton, also died Saturday when the helicopter they were flying to monitor the rally crashed and burned about 5 p.m.

The “Unite the Right” rally was called ostensibly to defend statues of Confederate generals — who fought to dismantle the country and protect slavery — that the Charlottesville City Council voted in April to take down.

The violence, which observers note was neither the largest nor the bloodiest political violence America has witnessed, had been anticipated. Yet it has created shockwaves that have raced across the country and slammed like a tsunami into the White House.

Even as organizers were claiming success and vowing to hold similar white supremacist rallies in other communities, the backlash was building steam. Counterdemonstrations and marches took place in 130 cities within hours and days, according to reports, including in Richmond.

The activities became rallying points to denounce white supremacy and mourn Ms. Heyer as a martyr to diversity and equality. On Sunday night, more than 200 people rallied at Abner Clay Park in Richmond’s Jackson Ward and marched to the Monument Avenue statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee to condemn the Confederate symbolism that dominates this city.

New efforts emerged across the country to remove or destroy Confederate statues in response to Charlottesville. It was reminiscent of actions taken to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse and New Orleans removing its rebel statues after white supremacist Dylan Roof shot and killed nine people worshipping in a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., in an effort to start a race war.

This week, Baltimore led the way, putting pressure on a reluctant Richmond Mayor Levar M. Stoney to change position and direct a commission studying the city’s Confederate monuments to consider their removal.

He issued his new statement hours after Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, with the backing of the City Council there, quietly hired contractors to remove and haul away the city’s four Confederate statues before daylight Wednesday.

Separately, the mayor of Lexington, Ky., also is moving ahead with plans to move two Confederate statues from a former courthouse that earlier was the site of a slave market and relocate them to a park with other war memorials.

Others are not waiting for government action.

On Monday in Durham, N.C., activists shouting “No KKK, No fascist USA” toppled a statue of a Confederate soldier that had stood for seven decades in front of the city’s old courts building.

In Atlanta, a Confederate statue was damaged.

Still, there are at least 700 statues in small and large communities, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, and the majority are considered likely to survive.

Meanwhile, President Trump, who initially failed to denounce the vicious white supremacists and sought to paint their opponents with the same brush, found himself increasingly isolated and under attack for moral bankruptcy.

On Wednesday, the president, who named several white supremacists such as Steven Bannon of Richmond to key White House positions and eagerly courted such groups during his campaign, was forced to disband two business advisory councils as a result of the backlash from Charlottesville.

He acted after a parade of big business chief executives quit the councils in protest over his tepid response to Charlottesville and failure to do more to challenge the white supremacist views that were espoused during the weekend.

“Racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and are not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottesville,” Campbell Soup CEO Denise Morrison stated after quitting the president’s manufacturing council. She was following the lead of Kenneth Frazier, CEO of Merck, a major drug manufacturer, who was the first of several to turn in his resignation.

“I believe the president should have been — and still needs to be — unambiguous on that point,” Ms. Morrison stated in echoing the views of Mr. Frazier.

It is clear the events in Charlottesville would never have taken place without the instigation of two men. They are Jason Kessler, a Charlottesville blogger and University of Virginia graduate who transformed from membership in the liberal Occupy Movement to a white supremacist advocate. The other is Richard Spencer, a U.Va. graduate who coined the term “alt-right” to describe white hate groups and now leads the National Policy Institute to promote “white power” and bash African-Americans, Jews, gays, immigrants and other groups that he sees as threats to white heritage.

Several people injured by Mr. Fields already have filed a lawsuit seeking $3 million in damages from the driver, Mr. Kessler and others involved in the rally.

However, virtually every official knew in advance that the rally could result in violence. Two previous rallies at Charlottesville’s statues of Confederates Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson had resulted in problems.

In May, Mr. Spencer led the first, bringing about 100 followers to a Nazi-style, torch-lit parade that resulted in a few scuffles with appalled protesters.

That led to a Ku Klux Klan rally in June. About 50 KKK members showed up and ended up needing needed police protection after nearly 2,000 people turned out to show their opposition. Protesters were tear-gassed and 23 people were arrested.

Mr. Kessler, who considered the KKK event a flop, then issued the call for the latest rally, which, with help from the Virginia Flaggers, a group that promotes the flying of the Confederate flag, attracted Mr. Spencer and his acolytes and other members of white supremacy organizations. Less than 1,000 came, but many came armed.

Ahead of the rally, Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas spent weeks strategizing with counterparts at the state level to head off problems.

Hundreds of police officers from the Virginia State Police, Charlottesville and surrounding jurisdictions were mobilized for the Saturday, Aug. 12, event, and Gov. Terry McAuliffe also had the National Guard on standby.

But when the balloon went up, nothing went as planned.

Witnesses and participants, including Mr. Kessler, expressed dismay at what they saw as a lack of immediate police response to the violence.

On Friday night, the tone was set when more than 200 members of the white supremacist groups, almost all young white men, marched through the U.Va. campus carrying lighted torches in another Nazi-style parade.

Witnesses said police watched but stood by and allowed the marchers to menace onlookers. Police, they said, got involved only after the marchers began to poke and aggressively swing torches at about 30 Black Lives Matter members who sought to stand against them. The march was declared an unlawful assembly and dispersed.

On Saturday, the situation was even more threatening and violent, but Chief Thomas and state Secretary of Public Safety Brian Moran refused to force an end to the rally until more than 90 minutes of fights had occurred.

Instead, police officers were allowed to stand by as fights broke out across Emancipation Park at least two hours before the rally’s noon start, according to multiple reports.

Helen Alli of Glen Allen, who was part of a 10-member delegation from Richmond’s First Unitarian Universalist Church to travel to Charlottesville to “pray for peace and harmony,” said conditions began deteriorating as soon as the alt-right participants arrived.

“The extremists, the terrorists almost immediately began harassing people who had been peacefully standing around,” she said. “There were fights starting, and I saw women as well as men who stood against them getting beaten up or pepper-sprayed.”

She said the extremists even confronted her group.

She said her group retreated to a nearby church, which set up an outside shower to allow those hit with chemical sprays to hose off.

Phil Wilayto, editor of The Virginia Defender, reported that many of the white supremacists “came prepared for battle, with helmets, shields, body padding and visible weapons, including guns.”

But that kind of battle dress failed to trigger immediate official alarm. Secretary Moran watched the violence from a command post as time ticked by before a request went to Gov. Terry McAuliffe to declare a state of emergency.

All the while, “people punched and kicked each other during various scuffles, which were often broken up within crowds, without police intervention,” one news service reported.

Another reported that “an angry mob of white supremacists formed a battle line across from a group of counterprotesters … On command from their leader, the young men charged and pummeled their ideological foes. One woman was hurled to the pavement” as state troopers and Charlottesville police watched “and did nothing. It was a scene that played out over and over again.”

Finally, around 11:30 a.m., Chief Thomas declared an unlawful assembly, though it took at least 10 more minutes before state and local officers in riot gear began dispersing the people in the park.

State officials as well as Chief Thomas later defended their efforts. Chief Thomas told reporters the plan was to have the alt-right group enter from one side of the park and counterprotesters to enter from another.

“But people began entering the park from all different directions,” he said Monday. That made crowd control impossible, he said.

He did not address the reason officers were not deployed sooner to do more to separate the two sides and disrupt the fighting.

To Mr. Wilayto, the weekend’s events show that white extremist organizations are growing and becoming more dangerous and that opponents cannot rely on the police to provide adequate protection.

Others see a way forward.

“This violence will continue unless we commit to condemning and standing against it,” said Charlottesville resident Brennan Gilmore, a former foreign service officer, who has seen extremist groups become dominant in other countries when people stood by.

“We need to actively oppose those who seek to divide us along racial lines and demand our leaders do the same.”