Civil Rights Memorials and the Geography of Memory (review)

How do we remember the Civil Rights Movement? How do we commemorate the Civil Rights Movement? What narratives of the Movement become sanctioned in the public sphere? Geographers Dwyer and Alderman address these questions and reveal the complexities of their answers in their latest book project on civil rights memorials. Their text interrogates case studies of civil rights memorials across the nation with overarching questions about the significance of marking landmarks of the Movement and meticulous discussions of the multiple perspectives involved in the support of and resistance to creating civil rights memorials.

The Introduction lays out the emotional and economic conflicts of creating a legitimized space of memory in a case that recurs throughout the text: the renaming of Ninth Street in Chattanooga, Tennessee to Martin Luther King, Jr. Street. White business owners' and investors' fears of being associated with a "Black" street brought threats of withdrawing funds from cultivating new businesses on the street. Black community leaders insisted that King worked for all communities, not just Black ones, and therefore should be honored even in a place where Whites worked. Further, Black leadership argued that White protest of the renaming hurt the potential for new businesses along the street by creating a hostile environment for investors. The solution was to split the street so that part was renamed and the other remained Ninth Street. In addition, White own businesses changed their addresses to adjacent streets, avoiding their association with King. This resolve demonstrates the anxieties over the commemoration of the Movement leader and unveiled the limits of consensus regarding the significance and value of King as a synecdochical figure for the Movement.

Chapter 1 analyzes the stories told through civil rights memorials. The authors pay particular attention to the interpretation of the Movement at commemorative sites and narratives that have been omitted from them. Chapter 2 discusses the financial realities involved in creating civil rights memorials that range from physical markers to create an official landmark to renaming a street. Chapter 3 addresses where civil rights memorials are dispersed around the country and the meaning of their locations and absences in significant places.

The most meaningful contribution of the text is the level of consideration of the memorials which are often regarded as heritage tourist sites. The ritual of visiting museums, parks, churches and the like that have become iconic places in the national collective memory of the Movement is contextualized and deconstructed. After reading the authors' analyses, these memorials can not longer be taken for granted as places that mark the Movement's success, but instead are historicized as evidence of the contentious contemporary struggle for racial equity that extends into our present moment. Their comprehensive investigation—which incorporates approaches from Cultural Studies, American Studies, American History, Art History, as well as Geography—make the book relevant to readers and scholars of multiple disciplines. The text includes a gallery of seventy-eight civil rights memorials with annotated captions that provide the history, and often contentious issues, of each illustrated site in a nutshell. This feature makes the book a necessary traveling companion to the places discussed.