PROPOSAL TYPE
Traditional Panel
SEEKING
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
- Seeking Additional Presenters
RELATED TOPICS
- Memory
- Place
- Preservation
ABSTRACT
This session will focus on the issues that surround preserving and interpreting spaces of historic and cultural significance that existed temporarily or have gone unpreserved, and how the creation of permanent exhibits and structures that represent impermanent spatial and social practices can complicate prevailing memory narratives. We would also like to discuss how many of these spaces can be important to expanding upon the traditional discussion and teaching of the African American freedom struggle, going beyond the “canon” of figures, places, and events to recenter neglected places and people important to antiracist struggle.
DESCRIPTION
While emphasizing the importance of spaces that have been neglected from the established narratives of the African American freedom struggle, we think there is also an opportunity to use the interpretation of historic sites–especially short-lived spaces–to resist efforts to sanitize the Movement. Through these kinds of historic sites and inclusion in broader public history, there is a great opportunity to illustrate significant stories that extend past keystone events, leaders, and memorials. In many cases, these spaces can build on narratives of resistance and activism, especially through including the stories of everyday people whose not only survival, but living and placemaking are woven through many eras and movements.
Our work specifically draws attention to this discussion as it is related to the Civil Rights Movement. In the early to mid-1960s, Black activist communities and their allies built tent cities (also called Freedom Cities or Villages) on Black-owned land to provide housing to sharecroppers and tenant farmers subjected to “retaliatory eviction” for marching, attending mass mobilization meetings, and trying to register to vote.
We are seeking at least two additional presenters. We welcome presenters who are working on similar or different eras or movements.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly: Katrina Finkelstein, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, [email protected]
ALL FEEDBACK AND OFFERS OF ASSISTANCE SHOULD BE SUBMITTED BY JULY 7, 2022. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
Katrina,
This panel proposal you have here is great and is very necessary. It’s something City Planning and Historic Preservation departments are grappling with as they move to restructure and sustain their cities. Some are making attempts to identify and preserve black spaces but do not know where to begin or how to start that conversation. I’m looking forward to this panel and actually would love to be a part of it.
This is a fantastic proposal. Ari Green will be a wonderful addition. Do you know the book “Marked, UnMarked, Remembered?” It combines photographs by Alex Lichtenstein with essays by a variety of historians and public historians. There may be someone involved in that project who would make a good fellow panelist.
It might be interesting to connect with current efforts to mark, interpret and preserve Black Panther Party history in Oakland. Archivist and curator Lisbet Tellefsen (http://www.thealliance.media/profile/lisbet-tellefsen/) is among those involved. I can introduce you if you’d like. I also know that National Parks Conservation Association is also floating the idea of a new national park. Best, Donna
Excellent topic. If your are not already familiar with him (perhaps you are) I suggest also reaching out to Dr. Brandon K. Winford at the University of Tennessee in the Department of history.
Excellent proposal, If you have not yet made contact with him, I suggest also reaching out to Brandon K. Winford at University of Tennessee in the Department of History.
This is an excellent discussion to have and will allow your participants and the audience to think more deeply about why and how we preserve. Factoring in how we navigate spaces that were always intentioned to be temporary is a lens into historic preservation that can always be more explored. I think it also lends space to practitioners letting go of places and spaces when it’s time, or rather, deciding when a certain level of preservation would be more effective than the physical space itself.
What a great topic! As an attendee, I’d be eager to hear panelists explore the possible tensions that arise when you preserve an ephemeral space. What does it mean to create a permanent marker for an impermanent site? (It strikes me that many places that are important to the history of political struggles are “short-lived” in terms of their period of significance, to use the National Register’s term.)
I love this and I especially love being able to highlight spaces where activism happened, but the community may not be aware because it was seen as a “temporary” site even though it was significant to the history. I know there were many sites like this as part of the Freedom Struggle and this session could help sites who tell the stories bring more awareness in their exhibits and interpretation
This is an important topic. Please contact Phillip Howard, who is working with the National Parks Conservation Fund in Birmingham, AL. He is working to preserve the campsites along the Selma-to-Montgomery March route and other forgotten places of the civil rights movement.