Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

The proposed paper asks the question, is there a tectonic shift taking place in the memorial landscape of the United States? To consider this question, I will examine two current phenomena. The first is the heated debates and movements related to symbols of the Confederacy (1860-65), the founding principle of which was the preservation of slavery. The second concurrent phenomenon to be examined is the emergence of a new genre in the U.S. memorial landscape, which is dedicated to the recognition and contemplation of the atrocity of slavery and its many legacies. Commemoration of an atrocity perpetrated by its own people against its own people is a dramatic innovation on the U.S. memorial landscape. In June 2015, holding a gun and Confederate flag, white supremacist Dylan Roof murdered nine black people in a church in South Carolina. In July 2015 the Confederate flag came down from the South Carolina State House. Since that time a widespread movement (and counter movement, of course) to remove flags, monuments and other public iconography honoring the Confederacy has burgeoned. In 2014 the first museum solely focused on slavery opened in Louisiana. In 2018 the National Memorial to Peace and Justice, dedicated to the history of lynching, and the related Legacy Museum, focusing on slavery and its legacies, opened in Alabama. Recognition, responsibility, respect, and reparation are some of the themes engaged in these new spaces. This paper asks, might removal and symbolic erasure be part of the rehabilitation of collective memory?