Thirteenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

Montgomery, AL provides a microcosm of the history of white supremacy in the U.S. from slavery, the civil war and founding of the confederate government, through the Civil Rights movement. These were all central to the founding and development of Montgomery. I examine the dominant, concealed and transformative narratives told about this history by the Montgomery tourist industry, monuments, museums, and historical markers in ‘America’s most historically marked city.’ I also examine the narratives told in recent years by social justice organizations, working to change the city’s landscape by telling new stories of resistance through the landscape of the city. After the end of the transatlantic slave trade Montgomery became a center of the U.S. market. It’s planning and construction, largely unchanged, was designed to serve the slave trade. The city landscape was later marked by the Civil War and the construction of the first White House of the Confederacy; and 100 years later during the Civil Rights movement. The homes of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s parsonage and the Dexter Ave. Baptist church, the site where Rosa Park refused to give up her seat on a bus, the bus station where the freedom riders faced a bloody attack by the police, and the final destination of the Selma to Montgomery march. The spaces and places that make up downtown Montgomery are the basis of complex and competing narratives of the history of race and racism. Which stories get told? Get heard? How? When? Where? And most importantly, why?