memorials

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/24/2022
  

  Post Editors: Statue or No, Teddy Roosevelt's Complex Legacy is Still with Us

  It's appropriate for Theodore Roosevelt's statue to be removed from its position as a figurehead for the Museum of Natural History, but just as appropriate for the statue to be housed in the new Roosevelt Presidential Library where TR's complicated legacy can be more fully addressed, say the Post's editorial board members.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/23/2022
  

  Confederate Groups are Keeping the Lost Cause Myth on Life Support

  by Erin L. Thompson

  "Confederate heritage" groups have used their financial resources to bring lawsuits before sympathetic judges to thwart the public's desire to remove monuments to the white supremacist pro-slavery government in public spaces. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  1/20/2022
  

  Museum of Natural History in New York Removes Theodore Roosevelt Statue

  While Roosevelt's support of natural history has been noted, museum officials acknowledged that the statue "communicates a racial hierarchy" that constitutes a darker side of the former president's legacy.

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• SOURCE: AL.com
  1/12/2022
  

  Alabama's Capitol is a Crime Scene, with a 120 Year Coverup

  The Alabama Capitol in Montgomery was the first seat of the Confederate government and the place where white Democrats ratified a Jim Crow constitution in 1901. You'd learn little of this by touring the museum-like building. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/30/2021
  

  Richmond's Lee Statue, other Confederate Memorials Could go to Black History Museum

  Marland Buckner, interim executive director of the Black History Museum, said in the release that his institution “takes very seriously the responsibility to manage these objects in ways that ensure their origins and purpose are never forgotten: that is the glorification of those who led the fight to enslave African Americans and destroy the Union.”

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• SOURCE: Protean
  12/17/2021
  

  Dead Man Running (Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Jim Crow Blues Again)

  by Ryan Zickgraf

  Mobile's current municipal elections combined the bizarre with the bureaucratic and institutional politics of racism. 

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• SOURCE: WHYY
  12/3/2021
  

  Blair Mountain, West Virginia Still Shows the Grip of the Coal Industry

  “It was kind of weird growing up, knowing that there was a war fought here and nobody knew about it, and there’s no monuments to it,” Professor Chuck Keeney said. Others believe the story of the mine wars has been suppressed because it challenges the image of big coal as a benevolent force in the state. 

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• SOURCE: TIME
  12/7/2021
  

  Military Historian: 3 Myths about Pearl Harbor

  Rob Citino of the National World War II Museum addresses how Pearl Harbor has "lived in infamy" but not necessarily in accuracy. 

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• 12/5/2021
  

  Honoring Memory of the Sand Creek Massacre in the Age of COVID

  by Billy J. Stratton

  The community of descendants of the Sand Creek Massacre maintain rituals of healing that honor the dead while affirming bonds of community that have been tested by a long history of dispossession and the recent trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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• 12/5/2021
  

  DNA Testing Rescued Pearl Harbor's Dead from Patriotic Mythmaking

  by John Bodnar

  "When family members were asked for DNA samples and learned that long-lost loved ones might be coming home, they began to disclose to reporters aspects of the war’s legacy that had remained outside the glare of large public memorials and celebrations."

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  11/9/2021
  

  Colin Powell's Funeral: A Missed Opportunity for Unity

  by Sarah J. Purcell

  Since George Washington's death in 1799, Americans have used the funerals of prominent leaders as occasions to temporarily escape growing factional and partisan division. 

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• SOURCE: Orange County Register
  11/8/2021
  

  Cal State Fullerton Students Develop Public History Archive of Confederate Monuments

  The recent movement to reconsider Confederate monuments represents a kind of synthesis of public and academic histories with a moral component, which Benjamin Cawthra encourages his public history students to investigate. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/18/2021
  

  Jefferson Statue to be Removed from NY City Council Chambers

  "Annette Gordon-Reed, a Harvard Law School professor and a Jefferson expert, objected to the idea of taking down the Jefferson statue, but said that if it were to move to the New-York Historical Society, where she serves as a trustee, it would be a best-case scenario."

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• SOURCE: NPR
  10/14/2021
  

  Mary McLeod Bethune Statue is Coming to the Capitol

  Florida legislators unanimously approved Bethune to replace Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith in the Capitol statuary in 2018. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/5/2021
  

  A Tech-Savvy Holocaust Memorial in Ukraine Draws Critics and Crowds

  “I grew up with war stories from my grandparents’ generation,” said Andrej Umansky, a German historian with Ukrainian ancestry working for the private initiative, the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center. “But students today don’t have the same connection.... To talk about the Holocaust is the same as talking about ancient Rome.”

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• SOURCE: NPR
  10/3/2021
  

  The National Monument Audit Asks: Who Do American Honor Most?

  A study of 50,000 monuments by Monument Lab shows Lincoln, Washington and Columbus are still broadly honored in public places, but mermaids have more monuments than congresswomen do. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/29/2021
  

  White, Male, and, for Now, Still on Pedestals

  Paul Farber, director of Monument Lab, said, “We must see monuments as way stations that reflect our values. This is a generational process.”

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  10/4/2021
  

  Alabama Spends More than a Half Million Annually on a Confederate Memorial; Black Historical Sites Struggle

  "It is the only museum in the state that has a dedicated revenue stream codified in the state’s constitution. So while other museums struggle to keep their doors open, search for grants for funding and depend on volunteer staff, the Confederate Memorial Park is flush with cash."

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  9/28/2021
  

  When Black History Gets Unearthed, Who Speaks for the Dead?

  by Jill Lepore

  Locating and unearthing African American burial grounds is only the beginning of a process involving difficult questions of justice and inheritance. Should federal legislation make up for the legacy of dispossession that leaves cemeteries in legal limbo and without means for upkeep? 

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• 9/19/2021
  

  Richmond's Lee Statue Has Come Down. What About Confederate Memorials in Cemeteries?

  by Jeffrey Smith

  The statue of Robert E. Lee on Richmond’s Monument Avenue finally came down, to both fanfare and controversy. But some Confederate monuments are even more politically loaded—the ones where we bury the dead.