As Americans seek to dismantle Confederate monuments, they must also actively create new monuments and narratives that broaden their understanding of justice, democracy, and humanity. Hanna Kim, who works on the Convict Leasing and Labor Project, argues for a memorial dedicated to the "Sugar Land 95"—the remains of 95 African Americans who are believed to have labored under convict leasing in Sugar Land, Texas.
Just as monuments--including ruins--are important symbols of power, they can also be useful tools to dismantle oppressive systems and decolonize public spaces. Stephanie Gibson discusses these processes of decolonizing spaces by drawing comparisons between the Awaiting Trial Block in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the Brick Rack in Minneapolis, MN.
In this exchange, Mauricio Tarfur Salgado and Carlos Sirah have a conversation about future vision, and values that ground Remember2019, a collaborative project that supports and facilitates local practices of self-determination, memory, and reflection that are directly related to the mass lynching of 1919 in Phillips County, Arkansas.
In this reflection, Ashley Teague considers the larger impact of the work of Remember2019, a collaborative project that supports and facilitates local practices of self-determination, memory, and reflection that are directly related to the mass lynching of 1919 in Phillips County, Arkansas.
Last week, Philadelphia finally responded to the long-standing, persistent calls by protestors and activists to remove a monument and mural to former mayor and police commissioner Frank Rizzo. What should replace it? We took a look back to see how public participants in our research in 2017 imagined a future for the Rizzo statue before it was removed.