In the police department, it was a struggle to be Black, and at home, it was a struggle to be blue

A man in a blue T-shirt and raised arm faces another man who has a confederate flag draped around his shoulders. On the side, an officer in a baseball cap is looking at the two men, and another officer is on the other side. A woman’s back is in the frame as well.

After the Ku Klux Klan rally in Charlottesville, Virginia on July 8, 2017, a friend sent Regine Wright a photograph they found on social media. Wright (the officer on the left) remembers the scene. The counter-protester asked why she was helping the KKK. “I told him that I wasn’t there for the KKK, I was there to keep him safe and out of trouble” Wright writes. Photo courtesy of David McNair/The DTM

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By Regine Wright for Charlottesville Tomorrow

For Charlottesville, the Unite the Right Rally was traumatizing. For me, the Ku Klux Klan rally the month before, on July 8, 2017, was equally so. It reminds me of how my time as a Charlottesville police officer was complicated by the need to live between two worlds.

That Saturday, about 50 Klansmen and 1,000 counter-protesters came to Charlottesville. I was assigned to the investigations unit — the first Black female detective in department history. The investigations unit was tasked with escorting the KKK members to and from the Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson statue. However, when the plan for the event was released, I was the only person from the investigation unit reassigned to a patrol unit for the day.