This conversation between Declaration House lead artist Sonya Clark and her close friend Gayle Jessup White, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s first public relations and community engagement officer, and the first descendant of Jefferson and the families he enslaved to work for the foundation, was recorded on Tuesday, December 19, 2024, on Zoom and moderated by Yolanda Wisher, senior curator at Monument Lab.
Which stories belong in public? Monument Lab – Re:Generation offers responses through creative and impactful local projects of reclamation that provide a deeper understanding of how monuments live and function in communities.
Memorials often erase the very lives they claim to honor. Is it even possible to remember without replicating violence? The question haunts—not just how we remember, but whether we can. This piece reconsiders the debate over Dana Schutz’s painting “Open Casket” and how easily Emmett Till’s memory can be reduced to trauma, turning him into a monumental symbol and not a child who loved knock-knock jokes, packed his suitcase early for summer adventures, and begged for a motorbike.
Wright Thompson’s essay examines the site of Emmett Till’s murder and the people whose lives intersect with its memory—witnesses, descendants, investigators, and current landowners. Tracing how historical violence is preserved, buried, and reinterpreted across generations, this piece reveals the ongoing tension between collective erasure and public memorialization.