Across the south, monuments associated with the Confederacy have toppled as protests against the murder of George Floyd, police brutality and racial injustice took over cities around the world. These moments act as catalysts by removing white supremacists imagery from the landscape and making space to reimagine how we memorialize history.
WBUR arts and culture reporter Cristela Guerra and I set out on a roadtrip from our childhood home state of Florida to three cities where Confederate monuments once stood and in some cases, where new monuments currently stand. What can the north learn from the south in navigating this crucial moment? How do we as a country clarify history to catch up with culture?
James "Jimmy" Jackson, civil rights activist and former leader of the NAACP Youth Council, at the Linconville Museum and Cultural Center in St. Augustine, FL. Jackson believes the monuments should stay in place, recontextualized, as a reminder of an ugly past.
A confederate monument cracked during relocation to Trout Creek Memorial Park and Marina in St. Augustine, Fla., Feb. 1, 2021.
AME Pastor Ron Rawls at his church in Gainesville, Florida. Rev. Rawls was an advocate for the removal of confederate monuments in St. Augustine, where he previously lived and served.
Feb. 2, 2021.
The empty pedestal stands where the Robert E. Lee monument was once located at Lee Circle in New Orleans, LA., Feb. 5, 2021.
Power to Memory. Tulane Professor of Art History Dr. Mia Bagneris poses for a portrait atop the empty platform of the former Jefferson Davis monument in New Orleans in early February 2021. Dr. Bagneris teaches a course on Narratives Surrounding the Civil War in American Art & Visual Culture.
Mardi Gras reveler Jennifer Jones dances upon the former platform of the Battle of Liberty Place monument as Flozell Daniels of the Foundation for Louisiana poses for a portrait in New Orleans, Feb. 6, 2021.
Bulbancha Forever. Klie Kliebert of Imagine Waterworks with Historian Jeffrey Darensbourg, enrolled member of the Atakapa-Ishak Nation, and dancer Kai at Congo Square in New Orleans, Feb. 7, 2021..
"What do we need to remember that will push back against the forgetting encouraged by consumer culture and linear time? What can we remember that will surround us in oceans of history and potential? And how?"
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals