8 Contentious Pasts, Contentious Futures: Race, Memory, and Politics in Montgomery’s Legacy Museum
-
Amy Sodaro
Abstract
With memory politics playing an increasingly central role in political and social life, there has been a shift in the American commemorative landscape towards sites that attempt to critically confront America’s history of racial violence, exemplified by The Legacy Museum: From Slavery to Mass Incarceration, created by the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. The museum focuses on the most contentious and painful aspects of America’s past, which have usually only been touched upon as a prelude to the triumphalist narrative of the success of the Civil Rights Movement. Unlike other US memorial museums, The Legacy Museum confronts controversial aspects of the US’s past in very material and demanding ways, asking individuals to acknowledge their role in past and present racial injustice and placing white Americans in the position of what Michael Rothberg has called the “implicated subject.” This chapter analyses The Legacy Museum’s confrontation of America’s racist past in the context of the current social-political moment in the US and within the larger global commemorative trend of memorial museums as a form of reckoning with contentious pasts and futures.
Abstract
With memory politics playing an increasingly central role in political and social life, there has been a shift in the American commemorative landscape towards sites that attempt to critically confront America’s history of racial violence, exemplified by The Legacy Museum: From Slavery to Mass Incarceration, created by the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. The museum focuses on the most contentious and painful aspects of America’s past, which have usually only been touched upon as a prelude to the triumphalist narrative of the success of the Civil Rights Movement. Unlike other US memorial museums, The Legacy Museum confronts controversial aspects of the US’s past in very material and demanding ways, asking individuals to acknowledge their role in past and present racial injustice and placing white Americans in the position of what Michael Rothberg has called the “implicated subject.” This chapter analyses The Legacy Museum’s confrontation of America’s racist past in the context of the current social-political moment in the US and within the larger global commemorative trend of memorial museums as a form of reckoning with contentious pasts and futures.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Series Editors’ Preface: Interpretive Lenses in Sociology – On the Multidimensional Foundations of Meaning in Social Life vii
- Notes on Contributors xii
- Acknowledgments xvii
- Introduction: Interpreting Contentious Memories and Conflicts over the Past 1
-
Interpreting Memories in the Social Dynamics of Contention
- On the Social Distribution of Soldiers’ Memories: Normalization, Trauma, and Morality 29
- Feminist Approaches to Studying Memory and Mass Atrocity 49
- Mobilizing Memories: Remembrance as a Social Movement Tool in the Vieques Anti-Military Movement (1999–2004) 69
- The Ballot of Donald and Hillary: Hateful Memories of Celebrity Leaders 89
-
Racism, Exclusion, and Mnemonic Conflict
- Building a Case for Citizenship: Countermemory Work among Deported Veterans 113
- Commemorations as Transformative Events: Collective Memory, Temporality, and Social Change 134
- Contentious Pasts, Contentious Futures: Race, Memory, and Politics in Montgomery’s Legacy Museum 154
-
Genocide, Memory, and the Historicizing of Trauma
- Remembrance and Historicization: Transformation of Individual and Collective Memory Processes in the Federal Republic of Germany 177
- Enlisting Lived Memory: From Traumatic Silence to Authentic Witnessing 197
- Changing Memories of the Shoah in Post-Communist Countries: New Memories and Conflicts 217
- How Difficult Pasts Complicate the Present: Comparative Analysis of the Genocides in Western Armenia and Rwanda 236
- Conclusion: Memory and the Social Dynamics of Conflict and Contention: Interpretive Lenses for New Cases and Controversies 258
- Index 266
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Series Editors’ Preface: Interpretive Lenses in Sociology – On the Multidimensional Foundations of Meaning in Social Life vii
- Notes on Contributors xii
- Acknowledgments xvii
- Introduction: Interpreting Contentious Memories and Conflicts over the Past 1
-
Interpreting Memories in the Social Dynamics of Contention
- On the Social Distribution of Soldiers’ Memories: Normalization, Trauma, and Morality 29
- Feminist Approaches to Studying Memory and Mass Atrocity 49
- Mobilizing Memories: Remembrance as a Social Movement Tool in the Vieques Anti-Military Movement (1999–2004) 69
- The Ballot of Donald and Hillary: Hateful Memories of Celebrity Leaders 89
-
Racism, Exclusion, and Mnemonic Conflict
- Building a Case for Citizenship: Countermemory Work among Deported Veterans 113
- Commemorations as Transformative Events: Collective Memory, Temporality, and Social Change 134
- Contentious Pasts, Contentious Futures: Race, Memory, and Politics in Montgomery’s Legacy Museum 154
-
Genocide, Memory, and the Historicizing of Trauma
- Remembrance and Historicization: Transformation of Individual and Collective Memory Processes in the Federal Republic of Germany 177
- Enlisting Lived Memory: From Traumatic Silence to Authentic Witnessing 197
- Changing Memories of the Shoah in Post-Communist Countries: New Memories and Conflicts 217
- How Difficult Pasts Complicate the Present: Comparative Analysis of the Genocides in Western Armenia and Rwanda 236
- Conclusion: Memory and the Social Dynamics of Conflict and Contention: Interpretive Lenses for New Cases and Controversies 258
- Index 266
