Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves
Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves

Author: Kirk Savage

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2018-07-31

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0691184526

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A history of U.S. Civil War monuments that shows how they distort history and perpetuate white supremacy The United States began as a slave society, holding millions of Africans and their descendants in bondage, and remained so until a civil war took the lives of a half million soldiers, some once slaves themselves. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves explores how the history of slavery and its violent end was told in public spaces—specifically in the sculptural monuments that came to dominate streets, parks, and town squares in nineteenth-century America. Looking at monuments built and unbuilt, Kirk Savage shows how the greatest era of monument building in American history took place amid struggles over race, gender, and collective memory. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves probes a host of fascinating questions and remains the only sustained investigation of post-Civil War monument building as a process of national and racial definition. Featuring a new preface by the author that reflects on recent events surrounding the meaning of these monuments, and new photography and illustrations throughout, this new and expanded edition reveals how monuments exposed the myth of a "united" people, and have only become more controversial with the passage of time.

Monument Wars
Monument Wars

Author: Kirk Savage

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2011-07-11

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0520271335

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Traces the history of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., discussing its plan and structures, and considering how the concept of memorials and memorial space has changed since the nineteenth century.

The Civil War in Art and Memory
The Civil War in Art and Memory

Author: Kirk Savage

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2016-01-01

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 0300214685

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"Proceedings of the symposium "The Civil War in Art and Memory," organized by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, and sponsored by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. The symposium was held November 8-9, 2013, in Washington."

Wounds of Returning
Wounds of Returning

Author: Jessica Adams

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2012-09-01

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1469606534

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From Storyville brothels and narratives of turn-of-the-century New Orleans to plantation tours, Bette Davis films, Elvis memorials, Willa Cather's fiction, and the annual prison rodeo held at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, Jessica Adams considers spatial and ideological evolutions of southern plantations after slavery. In Wounds of Returning, Adams shows that the slave past returns to inhabit plantation landscapes that have been radically transformed by tourism, consumer culture, and modern modes of punishment--even those landscapes from which slavery has supposedly been banished completely. Adams explores how the commodification of black bodies during slavery did not disappear with abolition--rather, the same principle was transformed into modern consumer capitalism. As Adams demonstrates, however, counternarratives and unexpected cultural hybrids erupt out of attempts to re-create the plantation as an uncomplicated scene of racial relationships or a signifier of national unity. Peeling back the layers of plantation landscapes, Adams reveals connections between seemingly disparate features of modern culture, suggesting that they remain haunted by the force of the unnatural equation of people as property.

Clinging to Mammy
Clinging to Mammy

Author: Micki McElya

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2007-10-31

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 0674040791

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When Aunt Jemima beamed at Americans from the pancake mix box on grocery shelves, many felt reassured by her broad smile that she and her product were dependable. She was everyone's mammy, the faithful slave who was content to cook and care for whites, no matter how grueling the labor, because she loved them. This far-reaching image of the nurturing black mother exercises a tenacious hold on the American imagination. Micki McElya examines why we cling to mammy. She argues that the figure of the loyal slave has played a powerful role in modern American politics and culture. Loving, hating, pitying, or pining for mammy became a way for Americans to make sense of shifting economic, social, and racial realities. Assertions of black people's contentment with servitude alleviated white fears while reinforcing racial hierarchy. African American resistance to this notion was varied but often placed new constraints on black women. McElya's stories of faithful slaves expose the power and reach of the myth, not only in popular advertising, films, and literature about the South, but also in national monument proposals, child custody cases, white women's minstrelsy, New Negro activism, anti-lynching campaigns, and the civil rights movement. The color line and the vision of interracial motherly affection that helped maintain it have persisted into the twenty-first century. If we are to reckon with the continuing legacy of slavery in the United States, McElya argues, we must confront the depths of our desire for mammy and recognize its full racial implications.

Museums, Monuments, and National Parks
Museums, Monuments, and National Parks

Author: Denise D. Meringolo

Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1558499407

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The rapid expansion of the field of public history since the 1970s has led many to believe that it is a relatively new profession. In this book, Denise D. Meringolo shows that the roots of public history actually reach back to the nineteenth century, when the federal government entered into the work of collecting and preserving the nation's natural and cultural resources. Yet it was not until the emergence of the education-oriented National Park Service history program in the 1920s and 1930s that public history found an institutional home. Even then, tensions between administrators in Washington and practitioners on the ground at National Parks, monuments, and museums continued to redefine the scope and substance of the field. The process of definition persists to this day as public historians establish a growing presence in major universities throughout the United States and abroad. Book jacket.

Written in Stone
Written in Stone

Author: Sanford Levinson

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2018-10-04

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 1478004347

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Twentieth Anniversary Edition with a new preface and afterword From the removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans in the spring of 2017 to the violent aftermath of the white nationalist march on the Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville later that summer, debates and conflicts over the memorialization of Confederate “heroes” have stormed to the forefront of popular American political and cultural discourse. In Written in Stone Sanford Levinson considers the tangled responses to controversial monuments and commemorations while examining how those with political power configure public spaces in ways that shape public memory and politics. Paying particular attention to the American South, though drawing examples as well from elsewhere in the United States and throughout the world, Levinson shows how the social and legal arguments regarding the display, construction, modification, and destruction of public monuments mark the seemingly endless confrontation over the symbolism attached to public space. This twentieth anniversary edition of Written in Stone includes a new preface and an extensive afterword that takes account of recent events in cities, schools and universities, and public spaces throughout the United States and elsewhere. Twenty years on, Levinson's work is more timely and relevant than ever.

Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves
Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves

Author: Kirk Savage

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9780691009476

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The United States originated as a slave society, holding millions of Africans and their descendants in bondage, and remained so until a civil war took the lives of a half million soldiers, some once slaves themselves. Historian Kirk Savage explores how that history of slavery and its violent end was recognized in public--specifically in the sculptural monuments that dominated streets, parks, and town squares in 19th-century America. 67 photos.

Denmark Vesey’s Garden
Denmark Vesey’s Garden

Author: Ethan J. Kytle

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2018-04-03

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1620973669

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One of Janet Maslin’s Favorite Books of 2018, The New York Times One of John Warner’s Favorite Books of 2018, Chicago Tribune Named one of the “Best Civil War Books of 2018” by the Civil War Monitor “A fascinating and important new historical study.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times “A stunning contribution to the historiography of Civil War memory studies.” —Civil War Times The stunning, groundbreaking account of "the ways in which our nation has tried to come to grips with its original sin" (Providence Journal) Hailed by the New York Times as a "fascinating and important new historical study that examines . . . the place where the ways slavery is remembered mattered most," Denmark Vesey's Garden "maps competing memories of slavery from abolition to the very recent struggle to rename or remove Confederate symbols across the country" (The New Republic). This timely book reveals the deep roots of present-day controversies and traces them to the capital of slavery in the United States: Charleston, South Carolina, where almost half of the slaves brought to the United States stepped onto our shores, where the first shot at Fort Sumter began the Civil War, and where Dylann Roof murdered nine people at Emanuel A.M.E. Church, which was co-founded by Denmark Vesey, a black revolutionary who plotted a massive slave insurrection in 1822. As they examine public rituals, controversial monuments, and competing musical traditions, "Kytle and Roberts's combination of encyclopedic knowledge of Charleston's history and empathy with its inhabitants' past and present struggles make them ideal guides to this troubled history" (Publishers Weekly, starred review). A work the Civil War Times called "a stunning contribution, " Denmark Vesey's Garden exposes a hidden dimension of America's deep racial divide, joining the small bookshelf of major, paradigm-shifting interpretations of slavery's enduring legacy in the United States.