Re-Remembering a Segregated Past: <em>Race in American Memory</em>

Theorizing Ethnic and Racial Movements in the Global Age

“…The CRM itself has been the subject of extensive commemoration (Romano and Leigh 2006), from documentaries like Eyes on the Prize (1987) to public memorials, street signs, annual ceremonies, and museums in epicenters of the movement like Memphis, Birmingham, and Greensboro. As Bindas (2010:120) observes, “Over forty-five films and television programs were aired dramatizing the movement since the latter part of the 1960s, and over 730 communities renamed roads to honor Martin Luther King Jr.” Further, Griffen (2004) shows that while collective memories of the CRM are widely cited by U.S. citizens broadly, individuals’ social and geographic location also influence the commemorative salience of the movement. Efforts to document and recognize the movement have involved contentious debates over content, sponsors, and styles of representation, with many resisting the tendency of dominant narratives to “water down” the movement by emphasizing themes of nonviolence, consensus, and colorblindness while minimizing attention to Black radicalism and the strategic use of violence to disrupt and dismantle oppression (Bindas 2010; Bruyneel 2014; Romano and Leigh 2006).…”

“…As Bindas (2010:120) observes, “Over forty-five films and television programs were aired dramatizing the movement since the latter part of the 1960s, and over 730 communities renamed roads to honor Martin Luther King Jr.” Further, Griffen (2004) shows that while collective memories of the CRM are widely cited by U.S. citizens broadly, individuals’ social and geographic location also influence the commemorative salience of the movement. Efforts to document and recognize the movement have involved contentious debates over content, sponsors, and styles of representation, with many resisting the tendency of dominant narratives to “water down” the movement by emphasizing themes of nonviolence, consensus, and colorblindness while minimizing attention to Black radicalism and the strategic use of violence to disrupt and dismantle oppression (Bindas 2010; Bruyneel 2014; Romano and Leigh 2006). Bruyneel (2014:80) argues in his discussion of the Martin Luther King Memorial and Stone of Hope on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., that the sponsorship and selection of quotes for the installation reproduced “a depoliticized, consensual image of King” that largely ignores his radical politics and critique of U.S. domestic and foreign policy.…”