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Hanging by a Thread: The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Complexities of Memorializing and Mourning Lynching in America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2024

MIA BLAINEY
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Abstract

BrANCH's Harriet Tubman essay prize seeks to reward the best undergraduate essay or research project by Black, Asian, or other minority ethnic students based in the UK. The prize is generously cosponsored by the Royal Historical Society.

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Readers' Room
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , February 2024 , pp. 143 - 150
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press in association with British Association for American Studies

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Footnotes

Prize head

Eyes on the Prize: Spotlight on BIPOC Scholar Achievement

Mia Blainey is the winner of the 2023 British American Nineteenth Century Historians’ (BrANCH) Harriet Tubman Essay Prize. Cambridge University. Email: [email protected].

References

1 Nora, Pierre, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations, 26 (1989), 7–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ibid.; Pritika Chowdhry, “What Are ‘Sites of Memory’ or ‘lieux de mémoires’?”, 28 Nov. 2022, at www.pritikachowdhry.com/post/sites-of-memory-lieux-de-memoires (accessed 23 March 2023).

3 Woodley, Jenny, “‘Nothing Is Lost’: Mourning and Memory at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice,” Memory Studies, 16, 5 (2022), 1054–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 1056, 1054.

4 Ibid., 1056.

5 The Guardian, “Pain and Terror: America Remembers Its Past,” YouTube, 26 April 2018, 00:00:00 to 00:00:30, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg1HvexuNKM (accessed 1 April 2023).

6 Stock, Paul, The Uses of Space in Early Modern History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 “Plan Your Visit,” The Legacy Sites, https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/visit (accessed 10 April 2023).

8 A short video of this display at the Legacy Museum can be accessed via The Guardian, “Pain and Terror.”

9 John Sharp, “Alabama Governor Says State Shouldn't ‘Erase or Tear Down’ Confederate Monuments,” AL.COM, 17 April 2018, at www.al.com/news/2018/04/post_164.html (accessed 1 April 2023), cited in Campbell Robertson, “A Lynching Memorial Is Opening. The Country Has Never Seen Anything Like It,” New York Times, 25 April 2018, at www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/us/lynching-memorial-alabama.html (accessed 2 April 2023).

10 You can view an image of this display at the Legacy Museum via William Anderson, “When a Lynching Memorial Becomes a Photo Opportunity,” Hyperallergic, 27 Dec. 2018, at https://hyperallergic.com/477049/old-habits-die-hard-when-a-lynching-memorial-becomes-a-photo-opportunity (accessed 10 April 2023).

11 “National Memorial for Peace and Justice,” Tripadvisor, at www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g30712-d13977560-Reviews-National_Memorial_for_Peace_and_Justice-Montgomery_Alabama.html#REVIEWS (accessed 12 April 2023).

12 Aamna Mohdin, “The G2 Interview: David Olusoga on Race and Reality: ‘My Job Is to Be a Historian. It's Not to Make People Feel Good’”, The Guardian, 7 June 2021, at www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/jun/07/david-olusoga-race-reality-historian-black-britishness (accessed 2 April 2023).

13 Woodley, “Nothing Is Lost,” 1058.

14 Ibid.

15 Hartman, Saidiya, Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 6Google Scholar, cited in Woodley, 1058.

16 Robertson.

17 Pictures which highlight the sheer scale of the NMPJ can be accessed via “The National Memorial for Peace and Justice,” MASS, at https://massdesigngroup.org/work/design/national-memorial-peace-and-justice (accessed 4 April 2023).

18 Robertson.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 The Guardian, “Pain and Terror.”

22 Robertson.

23 Amy Wood, “Lynching Photography and the Visual Reproduction of White Supremacy,” American Nineteenth Century History, 6, 3 (2005), 373–99, 373.

24 “History of Lynching in America,” NAACP, at https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-lynching-america (accessed 20 April 2023).

25 “A Memorial to US Victims of Lynching Opens in Alabama,” Frieze, 26 April 2018, at www.frieze.com/article/memorial-us-victims-lynching-opens-alabama (accessed 10 April 2023).

26 Doka, Kenneth, “Disenfranchised Grief,” Bereavement Care, 18, 3 (1999), 37–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 37, cited in Woodley, “Nothing Is Lost’,” 1057.

27 Woodley, 1054.

28 Ibid., 1058.

29 Jessica Reed et al., “America's First Memorial to Victims of Lynching Opens in Alabama – Live Updates,” The Guardian, 26 April 2018, at www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2018/apr/26/americas-first-memorial-to-lynching-victims-opens-in-alabama-live-updates (accessed 12 April 2023).

30 Woodley, 1054.

31 “National Memorial for Peace and Justice,” Tripadvisor, at www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g30712-d13977560-Reviews-National_Memorial_for_Peace_and_Justice-Montgomery_Alabama.html#REVIEWS (accessed 12 April 2023).

32 Woodley, 1055, 1054.

33 Jesse Jackson quoted in Reed et al.

34 Anderson, “When a Lynching Memorial Becomes a Photo Opportunity.”

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid.

37 “National Memorial for Peace and Justice,” Tripadvisor.

38 Anderson.

39 Robertson, “A Lynching Memorial Is Opening.”

40 Ibid.

41 This fact came to my attention when looking at the image Jenny Woodley took of the remaining columns that are yet to be collected from the site. This image can be found at Woodley, 1063.

42 Ibid.