In San Antonio, Remembering More Than the Alamo

Innovators Are Using Digital Tools to Tell Stories of the City’s Black and Latinx History

In San Antonio, Texas, one memorial—the church-turned-fort-turned-shrine of the Alamo—dominates the landscape. At the Alamo, the artifacts, images, and captions on display tell a unified story: That martyrs died there for Texas independence and that their sacrifice will never be forgotten. The didactics urge the public to observe this history with solemnity and reverie.

Yet the story is one-sided. While there were many root causes of the Alamo siege, one of the most important was that Texas Anglos were fighting Mexican soldiers to uphold slavery. In San Antonio, as in many …

Visual and Performance Artist Richard Lou

I Wanted to Be a Tank Commander, of All Things

Richard A. Lou is a visual and performance artist and professor of art at the University of Memphis. Before serving as a panelist for “What Kind of Monuments Do We …

Civil Rights Historian Daphne Chamberlain

Run to Your Passion

Daphne Chamberlain is an associate professor of history and the vice president for strategic initiatives and social justice at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi. Before serving as a …

There’s Power—and Promise—in Talking About Monuments

Doing Better By Future Generations Starts With Breaking Today’s Culture of Silence

“I get the feeling some people don’t want this conversation to happen,” said historian William Sturkey during last night’s public program at Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson, Mississippi.

The framing question …

The Union Army Regiment That Survived Andersonville

Defeated and Humbled in Battle, the 16th Connecticut Volunteers Gained a Measure of Redemption by Enduring a Year in a Brutal Confederate Stockade

More than 40 years after the Civil War ended, machinist George Q. Whitney, formerly a private in the 16th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, helped to dedicate a monument to his …