CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia - A car rammed into a crowd of protesters and a state police helicopter crashed into the woods on Saturday as tensions boiled over at a white supremacist rally. The violent day left three dead, dozens injured and this usually quiet college town a bloodied symbol of the roiling racial and political divisions in the United States.

The chaos erupted around what is believed to be the largest group of white nationalists to come together in a decade - including neo-Nazis, skinheads, members of the Ku Klux Klan - who descended on the city to "take America back" by rallying against plans to remove a Confederate statue. Hundreds of counter-protesters came to oppose the racism. There were street brawls and violent clashes; the governor declared a state of emergency; police in riot gear ordered people out; and helicopters circled overhead.

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer, both Democrats, lumped the blame squarely on the rancor that has seeped into US politics and the white supremacists who came from out of town into their city, which is home to Monticello, the plantation owned by the third US president, Thomas Jefferson.