Controversial Monuments and Memorials: A Guide for Community Leaders

Description

Out of the chaos and pain of Charlottesville, museum professionals, public historians, and community leaders must move quickly to face the challenges of competing historical memory, claims of heritage desecration and the ongoing scourge of racism. This book takes on the tough issues that communities across America---and analogous locales overseas---must face as white supremacy, political quagmires and visions of reconciliation with the past collide. The events of summer of 2017 that culminated in Charlottesville are outgrowths of ongoing dialogues and disputes about controversial history that encompass numerous historical situations and touch every part of US history. Strategies for working effectively with communities will be explored, and the book will delve into the ways that other countries have attempted to overcome their painful pasts. In addition, this book will highlight essays and case studies from numerous museum professionals, scholars and civic leaders as they grapple with the past they interpret for their visitors. The book will be framed by questions that help museum community leaders make sense of the competing historical narratives and political machinations that drive the current controversy around monuments and memorials--- * How and when do you remove an offensive monument? Hint: It’ll take more than a screwdriver…. * How can we be intentional about contextualizing the history and the motivations for building monuments for our visitors? * How can communities be responsive without forsaking the historical record? Here is a guide to collective introspection, awareness of our own biases, and thoughtful community responsiveness which are the tools that will make this engagement meaningful and lasting. David B. Allison is the editor of Controversial Monuments and Memorials: A Guide for Community Leaders and author of Living History: Effective Costumed Interpretation and Enactment at Museums and Historic Sites, published in 2016. He is the Onsite Programs Manager at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and holds an M.A. in U.S. History from Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis and a M.B.A. from Regis University. Prior to moving to Colorado, Allison designed and developed experiences for audiences at Conner Prairie Interactive History Park, north of Indianapolis, where he worked for ten years. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS LIST OF FIGURES LIST OF TERMS INTRODUCTION Charlottesville, Memory and How to Read this Book MUSEUMS, CONTROVERSY AND THE PAST 1. History as Legend and Myth as Fact David B. Allison 2. Confronting Confederate Monuments in the Twenty-First Century Modupe Labode 3. History, Memory, and the Struggle for the Future W. Todd Groce THE CIVIL WAR, RECONSTRUCTION AND THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF RACISM 4. Remembering the Civil War David B. Allison 5. Memorializing the Confederate Past at Gettysburg During the Civil Rights and Cold War Era Jill Ogline Titus 6. Tributes to the Past, Present, and Future: World War I-Era Confederate Memorialization in Virginia Thomas R. Seabrook 7. Don’t Call Them Memorials Julian C. Chambliss 8. A Lost Cause in the Bluegrass: Two Confederate Monuments in Lexington, Kentucky Stuart W. Sanders 9. Challenging Historical Remembrance, Myth, and Identity: The Confederate Monuments Debate F. Sheffield Hale 10. Empty Pedestals: What should be done with Civic Monuments to the Confederacy and its Leaders? Civil War Times NATIVE PEOPLES AND WHITE-WASHED HISTORY 11. From Columbus to Serra and Beyond David B. Allison 12. Native Voices at Little Bighorn National Monument Gerard Baker 13. Should the Statue of Theodore Roosevelt Outside the American Museum of Natural History Be Removed?: A Possible Compromise William S. Walker IDENTITY POLITICS AND THE RATIONAL AND SYMPATHETIC MINDS 14. Group Behavior, Self-examination and Clearing the Air around Controversial Issues David B. Allison 15. Confederate Memorials: Choosing Futures for Our Past, A Veteran’s Perspective George McDaniel 16. Speech upon the Removal of Confederate Statues from New Orleans, May 19, 2017 Mitch Landrieu 17. A Reflection of Us: The Simpsons and Heroes of the Past Jose Zuniga COMMUNITY RESPONSIVENESS AND HISTORICAL RE-CONTEXTUALIZATION 18. “The Struggle to Overcome the Negatives of the Past”: Germany’s Vergangenheitsbewältigung and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Program, David B. Allison 19. “We as Citizens.…”: Approaches to Memorialization by Sites of Conscience around the World Linda Norris 20. Listening and Responding to Community: A Long View David B. Allison 21. Confederate Statues at the University of Texas at Austin Ben Wright 22. Honoring El Movimiento: the Chicano Movement in Colorado JJ Lonsinger Rutherford 23. Not What's Broken; What's Healed: Women in El Barrio and the Healing Power of Community Vanessa Cuervo Forero 24. Telling the Whole Story: Education and Interpretation in Support of #1 in Civil Rights: The African American Freedom Struggle in St. Louis Elizabeth Pickard 25. Project Say Something’s Whose Monument Project: Not Tearing Down History, But Building Up Hope Brian Murphy CONCLUSION Bibliography Index About the Editor and Contributors