But it is also a city steeped in Southern history, one that still wrestles with the legacy of slavery. According to Jalane Schmidt, a professor of religious studies at the university, 52 percent of the residents of Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County — 14,000 people in all — were enslaved during the Civil War. Jefferson, still revered here, was himself a slave owner.

Today, African-Americans make up 19 percent of the city’s population, and gentrification is pushing many of them out, Ms. Schmidt said. The fight over the Lee statue — in a downtown park that was called Lee Park until it was recently renamed Emancipation Park — has opened up old wounds and brought simmering tensions over race to the fore.

Eugene Williams, 89, a former head of the local N.A.A.C.P., served sweet tea on the front porch of his house on Ridge Street one day this week and recalled the days when he was not allowed to dine at local restaurants. He favors keeping the Lee statue because he wants people to remember the Jim Crow era.

“This statue has a lesson to teach us,” he said.

The debate over the statue began about a year and a half ago, when an African-American high school student here started a petition to have it removed. Wes Bellamy, the city’s vice mayor and the only black member of the City Council, took up the cause, and the Council set up a commission. After public hearings, it recommended either that the statue be relocated to another park or that the city add historical context so that the monument could “transform in place.”

Instead, City Council members voted 3 to 2 in April to sell the statue. The next month, a judge issued an injunction, keeping the statue in place for six months.

“Charlottesville kind of made itself a target by deciding they wanted to remove this statue, and by stringing the whole thing out,” said Douglas Laycock, a University of Virginia law professor who is planning to give a talk on free speech Saturday as part of a “day of reflective conversation” organized by the university.