Person

Kirk Savage

Bylines

The Question of Monuments

Despite our long history of interrogating the memorial landscape, no movement has been able to dislodge it.

by Kirk Savage via Lapham’s Quarterly on July 13, 2020
A Personal Act of Reparation

The long aftermath of a North Carolina man’s decision to deed a plot of land to his former slaves.

by Kirk Savage via Lapham’s Quarterly on December 15, 2019

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BackStory

Podcast

BackStory

Henceforth Free: The Emancipation Proclamation

Learn about how Americans thought about emancipation in 1862, and its shifting meanings since then, as seen through the Emancipation Memorial in Washington D.C., the Civil War centennial commemorations in the height of the Civil Rights Era, and the former capital of the Confederacy today. Finally, hear the voices of former slaves themselves, remembering their first experiences of freedom.

January 6, 2015

1846 proposal for design of Washington Monument

Mall Rats

The early controversy over whether or not to build the Washington Monument on the National Mall.

via BackStory on May 23, 2014

Freedmen's memorial.

Of, By & For the Freedmen

On the aesthetics and history of the Freedman’s Memorial in Washington, D.C.

by Allen C. Guelzo, James Hankins via The New Criterion on October 1, 2020

Boston's Emancipation Memorial depicting a black man kneeling in front of Abraham Lincoln.

Black Bostonians Fought For Freedom From Slavery. Where Are The Statues That Tell Their Stories?

Contrary to the image of the kneeling slave, Black abolitionists did not wait passively for the "Day of Jubilee." They led the charge.

by Kevin M. Levin via WBUR on June 16, 2020

Black Charleston and the Battle Over Confederate Statues

The debate over a Charleston monument to John Calhoun exemplifies the problems of contextualizing Confederate monuments.

by Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders via Black Perspectives on January 29, 2018

Sphinx statue in Mount Auburn Cemetery.

American Sphinx

Civil War monuments erased an emancipated Black population, but the Sphinx looked to an integrated Africa and America.

by Colin Dickey via Longreads on August 31, 2017

Why Those Confederate Soldier Statues Look a Lot Like Their Union Counterparts

Many monuments in the South were made in the North — by the same companies, and with the same molds, as those sold to Northern towns.

by Marc Fisher via Washington Post on August 18, 2017

Crowd in front of Washington Monument for presidential inauguration

Monumental Disagreements

On America's iconic monuments and the idea of national remembrance.

via BackStory on May 24, 2013

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