memorials

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• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  6/16/2023
  

  Juneteenth has Gone National—We Must Preserve its Local Meanings

  by Tiya Miles

  Juneteenth celebrations have long been couched in local Black communities' preserved rituals that express particular ideas about heritage and the meaning of freedom. While a national commemoration of emancipation is welcome, history will be lost if local observances are swamped by a national holiday.

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  5/9/2023
  

  Arlington Cemetery Will Remove its Racist Confederate Monument, but Some Won't Let it Go

  by Erin L. Thompson

  The Arlington Confederate Memorial, according to a Defense Department review, mythologizes history so severely that no contextualizing signage could overcome its embodiment of the Lost Cause myths that justified Jim Crow. Some adherents of that myth are mad. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/8/2023
  

  Trinity College Dublin will Rename Berkeley Library to Stop Honoring Slaver

  Trinity College Provost Linda Doyle said that the college was not erasing the contributions of George Berkeley to philosophy and Irish intellectual life, but would no longer honor him with a building. 

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• SOURCE: The Bulwark
  5/3/2023
  

  Should Jimmy Carter's Coming Departure Change How We Memorialize Presidents?

  by Lindsay M. Chervinsky

  "When does respect and gratitude transfer from the office to the person—and when does that become inappropriate in a republic?" A presidential historian argues for emphasizing Carter's service while a private citizen as a way of emphasizing that the president is a first-among-equals citizen. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/28/2023
  

  In Germany, Soviet Memorials Raise Painful Memories, But are Protected

  Germany stands alone among European nations in protecting many Soviet-era monuments in the former East Germany. Honoring victims of Nazis has long been a reason, but this has been complicated by German support for Ukraine after its invasion by Russia. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  4/25/2023
  

  The United States Colored Troops Killed at Olustee, Florida are Still Owed a Proper Burial

  by Barbara A. Gannon

  Why are the remains of members of the United States Colored Troop still interred in unmarked graves at the Civil War battlefield of Olustee, Florida, when the defenders of a treasonous rebellion on behalf of slavery are buried with honors? 

• 
• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  3/1/2023
  

  Descendants of Slaveholder Donor Denounce Law School Name Change

  T.C. Williams donated a considerable sum to the University of Richmond's law school. He also relied on slave labor in his tobacco and manufacturing businesses. The university's new policy requires them to remove his name from a building. Descendants call this hypocritical and ungrateful and demanded an inflation-adjusted refund with interest of $3.4 billion.

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  2/8/2023
  

  It's Up to McCarthy to Remove Statues of Slavers from the Capitol

  A third of the artworks in the Capitol depict slaveholders. Whether they're replaced with other works, possibly those celebrating liberators, is largely up to the new House Speaker. 

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• SOURCE: Mississippi Free Press
  1/10/2023
  

  Why I Vandalized Ole Miss's Confederate Statue

  Zach Borenstein explains why he painted "Spiritual Genocide" on the base of a campus Confederate memorial, and why he wishes he had talked with local activists first. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/9/2023
  

  Hundreds of Errors in Korean War Memorial Wall

  If the Korean conflict is often called a "forgotten war," the wall of remembrance added to the Korean War Veterans' Memorial doesn't meet the challenge of remembering the fallen. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/2/2023
  

  When White Contractors Wouldn't Remove Confederate Statues, a Black One Did

  Devon Henry didn't seek the job of removing a dozen Confederate memorials in Richmond, but local white-owned vendors refused the contracts. He has received death threats and wears a bulletproof vest at job sites. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/31/2022
  

  Restored Victor Hugo Statue Vandalized by French Rightists Claiming "Wokeism" Run Amok

  The statue in the author's birth city of Besançon has become a lightning rod for controversy after a restoration aimed at returning to the vision of Senegalese sculptor Ousmane Sow was seen as presenting the author as Black.  

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• SOURCE: Philadelphia Inquirer
  12/14/2022
  

  Philly's Columbus Statue is Out of the Box—So is the Discussion About His Legacy

  Historian Hasan Kwame Jeffries talks about controversial statues: one removed in Richmond, and one uncovered in Philadelphia.

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• SOURCE: Philadelphia Inquirer
  7/4/2022
  

  Philly Plan for Tubman Memorial Draws Fire: Were Black Artists Excluded?

  The city awarded a commission for a permanent statue to Wesley Wofford, who designed a traveling memorial that had graced City Hall. Local artists, many Black, argued that the call wasn't fair and open. 

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• 6/12/2022
  

  "Our Best Memorial to the Dead Would be Our Service to the Living"

  by Allison S. Finkelstein

  An overlooked cohort of American women who served in the first world war worked to establish service, instead of statuary, as a mode of memorialization. Their example offers a path out of the heated politics of commemoration. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  5/26/2022
  

  The Monument Controversy We Aren't Discussing

  by Cynthia C. Prescott

  Outside of the former Confederacy, efforts to replace "Pioneer Mother" statues with depictions of Native American women have sparked a backlash including outright theft.

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• 5/29/2022
  

  We Need a National Emancipation Monument at Point Comfort – Where American Slavery Began, and Began to End

  by Steven T. Corneliussen

  While parts of the site are honored as the Fort Monroe National Monument, Point Comfort should be made a national monument to emancipation. 

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• SOURCE: Smithsonian
  5/24/2022
  

  An Exclusive Look at the New WWI Memorial

  Sculptor Sabin Howard's ambitious design for the memorial relied on the modern power of digital photography to capture motion and the old-school forming of clay to freeze it in time. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
  3/12/2022
  

  Erin Thompson's "Smashing Statues": Tear 'Em All Down

  How does taking down a statue relate to the more complicated work of eliminating the racist ideas and structures that put it up? 

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• SOURCE: Nashville Tennessean
  2/8/2022
  

  Confronting Confederate Heritage is Necessary to Understand White Supremacy

  by David Barber

  Everyday social life in the Confederacy required white Southerners to close their eyes and hearts to terrible cruelty. No reconciliation today is possible without acknowledging it.