From Legacy to Memory: Reckoning with Racial Violence at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice

Abstract

How are the legacies of violent pasts brought into collective memory? Even as social scientists have systematically documented the long shadow that racially motivated lynching has cast into the present, this history has had little place within dominant national narratives. Recently, however, the Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, has broken through the silence, attracting widespread attention and praise. This article examines how the memorial creatively adapts morally and emotionally resonant themes from dominant national narratives to bridge long-standing mnemonic cleavages between Black and white Americans. In addition, the article provides preliminary evidence that the legacies of racial violence are gaining a place in national memory.

Reorientation of foreign memories in domestic political speech: Considerations and effects

“…These locations are obviously man-made, produced by various actors in society with several objectives and aims. Consequently, collective memory is a selective practice (Schwartz, 1982; Zerubavel, 1995), constantly undergoing negotiation (Schwartz, 2000; Simko, 2021; Wagner-Pacifici, 1996), and constructed and reconstructed to achieve meaning relevant to present concerns and aspirations (Bekus, 2021; Steinweis, 2005).…”

Troubling America's historical waters: Toward the transdisciplinary study of U.S. lynchings as an active present

“…Alternatively, scholars can elect to assess archival materials or historical documents to address research questions which do not rely on interactions with living research subjects. Here, the methodological traditions of oral history (Brown, 2018;Loza, 2016;Martinez, 2018;Morris, 1984;Sims, 2016), qualitative interviews (Simko, 2021), historical ethnography (Hunter, 2013), critical fabulation 28 (Hartman, 1997(Hartman, , 2007, and event reconstruction (Henricks, 2018) are exemplary techniques that might be used to accomplish these aims. 29 Likewise, researchers may choose to explicitly focus on understanding how people prioritize their needs and safety concerns while navigating daily life in their counties, neighborhoods, or communities through in-depth or semi-structured interviews.…”

“…It shares some general similarities to historical ethnography, ethnography, and event reconstruction, but is quite distinct from these methods in practice.29 Angela Sims, Christina Simko, Karida Brown, and Monica Muñoz Martinez each deal with lynching specifically in their work. Also, some of these scholars employ more than one technique in their projects (e.g., Martinez, Morris).30 Future researchers might build upon ChristinaSimko's (2021) retrospective interview-based study by using ethnographic methods to observe a community remembrance ceremony in real-time and compare how participants oscillate between discussions of the past and the present.…”