The uses and reuses of monuments in the Black Lives Matter era

ABSTRACT

The destruction of white supremacist monuments has become a flashpoint in the Black Lives Matter mass movement. However, this essay recounts the construction of monuments by Black activists and artists, including their work to reclaim public space and monument aesthetics. Specifically, I discuss the liberatory memory work of the Equal Justice Initiative and Chicago Torture Justice memorials. I also explore how Black artists, particularly Kehinde Wiley and Kara Walker, have repurposed monumental aesthetics via blackwashing. Finally, I consider the appropriation of monument building by governments and foundations and question the motivations of these powerful entities’ entry into the “monuments movement”.

KEYWORDS:

• Monuments
• memorials
• Black Lives Matter
• memory
• liberatory memory-work
• blackwashing

Acknowledgments

Thanks to those colleagues and thought partners who have supported this research over the years including Michael Dawson, Ayesha Singh, Jenn M. Jackson, Agatha Slupek, Uday Jain, and David Knight. Thanks to the Art, Science, and Culture Initiative at the University of Chicago for funding and supporting this research and thanks to panel and audience members at the African American Intellectual History Society for their thoughtful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 “SPLC REPORTS OVER 160 CONFEDERATE SYMBOLS REMOVED IN 2020”. SPLC, 2021. https://www.splcenter.org/presscenter/splc-reports-over-160-confederate-symbols-removed-2020.

2 “Confederate monument protest”. Liberty Road, Inc. Video, 2020. https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=275945207083095&ref=watch_permalink.

3 “Constitution of the Confederate States”. Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp.

4 “The Rhodes Legacy”. https://www.oriel.ox.ac.uk/about/the-rhodes-legacy/.

5 “About”. Equal Justice Initiative. 2021. https://eji.org/about/.

6 “Timeline”. Chicago Police Torture Archive. https://chicagopolicetorturearchive.com/timeline.

7 Ordinance. Chicago City Government.

8 “Selected Design for Public Memorial”. Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, 2019. https://chicagotorture.org/reparations/selected-design-for-public-memorial/.

9 “Selected Design for Public Memorial”. Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, 2019, https://chicagotorture.org/reparations/selected-design-for-public-memorial/.

10 Lewis terms this statue by Wiley as well as work by the Equal Justice Initiative “groundwork”, where “a set of aesthetic strategies through which the literal and figurative meaning of ground is destabilized productively to establish new conditions in the era of Stand Your Ground law” (95).

11 “Creative Time Presents: Kara Walker’s A Subtlety”. nd.Creative Time. Org. https://creativetime.org/projects/karawalker/.

12 “Kara Walker's Fons Americanus”. Tate Modern, 2019. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/kara-walker-2674/kara-walkers-fons-americanus.

13 “Kara Walker's Fons Americanus”. Tate Modern, 2019. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/kara-walker-2674/kara-walkers-fons-americanus.

14 “Queen Victoria Memorial”. Royal Parks.org. https://www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/st-jamess-park/things-to-see-and-do/monuments-fountains-and-statues/the-queen-victoria-memorial.

15 McGrath“Kara Walker’s Fountain at the Tate Modern to be Destroyed”. Architectural Digest. https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/kara-walkers-fountain-at-the-tate-modern-to-be-destroyed.

16 “Chicago Monuments Project: Recommendations for the Current and Future Collection”. https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/dca/cmp/cmpreport.pdf

17 “Chicago Officials to Use $6.8M Grant to Build 8 New Monuments, Including Memorial to Torture Survivors”. WTTW. https://news.wttw.com/2023/06/19/chicago-officials-use-68m-grant-build-8-new-monuments-including-memorial-torture.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by UChicago Arts (UChicago Art, Science, and Culture Initiative Fell).