Memorializing the Civil Rights Movement: African American Rhetorics and the International Civil Rights Center and Museum

ABSTRACT

Despite a tradition of theorizing rhetorical aspects that have only recently become popular in the field (for example, embodiment, materiality, spatiality, ecologies), African and African American rhetorics (A/AAR) are infrequently invoked in the U.S. Four tenets of A/AAR—that rhetoric is ecological, communal, embodied, and generative—capture dynamic and often overlooked qualities of public memory places. The International Civil Rights Center and Museumin Greensboro, North Carolina employs these tenets to create a powerful experience and encourage visitors’ social engagement. A/AAR counter hegemonic rhetorical traditions and rearticulate public memory as integral to social justice.

Notes

1. Thank you to RR reviewers Tamika Carey and Tammie Kennedy for their insightful and constructive feedback on this article. Thanks also to History of Rhetoric students, Brenna Williams, Capryana Robertson, Isaiah Williams, Julian Hines, and Stuart Parrish for challenging and encouraging my thinking on this project.

2. I expand on the ICRCM’s use of affective and embodied rhetorics in a chapter in the forthcoming collection, Bodies of Knowledge: Embodied Rhetorics in Theory and Practice, edited by A. Abby Knoblauch and Marie Moeller.

3. See, for example, Barnett and Boyle; Cooper; Edbauer Rice; Gries; Hawhee.

4. Some scholars have mistakenly understood Asante’s theories to be essentialist or promoting Afro- over Euro- approaches, a misconception he addresses in his 1998 revised and expanded edition of The Afrocentric Idea.

5. The nickname for the students who started the Woolworth sit-in: Jibreel Khazan (then known as Ezell Blair Jr.), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond.

6. During the three tours I took, each guide covered the same general content with occasional supplementary material. Tours groups are arranged as visitors arrive. Guides are racially-diverse and mostly college students or recent graduates.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julie D. Nelson

Julie D. Nelson is an assistant professor in the Department of English & Writing at the University of Tampa. Her research focuses on cultural rhetorics, rhetorical contagion, and affect and emotion studies. Her work appears in enculturation, Radical Pedagogy, Composition Forum, and several edited collections.