Review

Reviewed Work(s): Civil Rights Memorials and the Geography of Memory by Owen J.
Dwyer and Derek H. Alderman
Review by: Jonathan Leib
Source: Material Culture , Fall 2011, Vol. 43, No. 2, Everyday Landscapes (Fall 2011), pp.
103-105
Published by: International Society for Landscape, Place & Material Culture

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23145853

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providing a case study which applies a set of specific themes, concepts, and terms.
Barry Lyons' Remembering the Hacienda capably guides the reader through his
research on complex hacienda relationships, along with the historical events leading
to changes in these relationships over time and space. The Runa who lived during
Ecuador's hacienda era continue to share stories with the younger generation living
after the hacienda system folded. This collective memory still impacts the attitudes
towards and interactions with authority figures, especially the state. This book,
therefore, becomes extremely relevant for those wanting to understand the Runa
today. In addition to being highly relevant, Remembering the Hacienda is an enjoyable
read. By varying the ways in which the book portrayed information from the author's
fieldwork, the writing style helps the reader more readily understand and engage with
the material covered in the book.

Ramin Zamanian has recently taught Introduction to Cultural Geography and World Regional
Geography as a PhD student in Oklahoma State University's Department of Geography. He received
both his Bachelor of Arts and Master's of Arts degrees in geography from Louisiana State University. His
main areas of interest and expertise include cultural geographies of religion, globalization, and tourism,
with a regional focus of Latin America.

Civil Rights Memorials and the Geography of Memory

By Owen J. Dwyer and Derek H. Alderman
Chicago: The Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago. 2008. 144 pp. illustrations,
bibliographic references, and index. $27.50 (paperback), ISBN 9781930066830.

Reviewed by Jonathan Leib, jleib@odu.edu, Department of Political Science and Geography, Old
Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529-0088

Owen Dwyer and Derek Alderman's Civil Rights Memorials and the Geography of
Memory is a timely, insightful and accessible contribution to the growing body of
work within cultural geography on public memory, contestation, and place making,
in this case within the context of the modern American South's cultural landscape.
While the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century saw the memorialization
of the Civil War on the American South s landscape, the past twenty years has
witnessed the memorialization of the Civil Rights Movement within the region's
public spaces. Dwyer and Alderman, geography's two leading experts on the
geographies of memory and the Civil Rights Movement, have teamed up in this
work to investigate where, when, how, why, and to what extent aspects of the
Movement have (and have not) been (re)presented in the region's public spaces and
cultural landscape. As Dwyer and Alderman note, their work "traces the spread of
Civil Rights memorials across the United States, describes the version of the past
they represent, and considers how audiences react to them" (p. 7).
The book is divided into five main sections. In the first section, Dwyer and
Alderman introduce the reader to key concepts and theories concerning the politics
of commemoration and geographies of memory, and then provide examples of how
these can be usefully applied to analyze Civil Rights memorials. Arguing that the
erection of memorials is a reflection of societal power relations, they suggest the
following key questions to be asked in the study of such sites: "How do landmarks

Vol. 43 (2011) No. 2 103

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come to be? Which stories do they embrace and which ones are rejected? Why is a
landmark placed here and not there? And finally, how do people - visitors, activists,
passerby — interact with memorials?" (p. 21).
Before answering these questions, Dwyer and Alderman present a 70 page
gallery displaying a wide range of images from Civil Rights memorials across the
American South; wide ranging both in terms of their geographic scope and in the
types of memorials depicted, from the more familiar monuments and statues, to
museums, street signs, historical markers, and important sites from the Movement.
The in-depth captions underneath each photo provide an overview of the authors'
main arguments throughout the book.
Following the photo gallery, Dwyer and Alderman set about answering their
main questions. First, they examine whose stories are being told, how those stories
are being told, and what stories are forgotten in Civil Rights memorials. The
authors argue that the celebration of the Movement on the landscape helps to
correct a long standing bias within America's symbolic landscape which honored
white contributions to American history, while ignoring the contributions of other
groups. In this regard, Civil Rights memorials help 'desegregate' the symbolic
landscape. At the same time, many of these memorials oversimplify what was a
complex Movement in terms of their overreliance on a 'great man' version of history
(highlighting the important role of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. within
the Movement [almost] to the exclusion of others), simplifying the multiple strands
of the Movement, and remaining silent on the work left to do today to overcome
contemporary racism (that is, the 'Won Cause' of the Civil Rights Movement has
not been totally won). Dwyer and Alderman also pay close attention to the role of
the tourism industry and economic development offices in how, where, when, and
by whom the history of the Movement is presented on today's landscape.
Second, they examine the politics and economics of creating the Civil Rights
memorial landscape. In this section, Dwyer and Alderman investigate two key
elements of this effort: the battles over (re)naming of streets for Dr. King, and the
creation of Civil Rights museums. Building on Alderman's previous research, the
first part traces the debates over renaming streets for Dr. King, focusing on where
such streets are named and what the renaming of these streets means (including
whether such streets are major or minor, are residential or main commercial
thoroughfares, and are located wholly within African American neighborhoods or
travel through predominately white and/or integrated areas). Building on Dwyer's
previous research, the second part examines the politics, planning and construction
of four Civil Rights museums in the American South: the King National Historic
Site in Atlanta, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Memphis' National Civil
Rights Museum, and the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma, Alabama.
The final section of the book is devoted to understanding where these memorials
are located at the regional, urban and neighborhood scales, and, more importantly,
why they are located where they are. Recognizing that Civil Rights memorials are
generally the result of a mix of activism and commercialism, Dwyer and Alderman
note the struggles over choosing their locations. At the urban scale, they note the

104 Material Culture

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implications of where the Movement is memorialized, noting the battles that occur
over memorializing the Movement within white, integrated and/or commercial
areas. Indeed, they suggest that Civil Rights memorials are generally found in
African American neighborhoods rather than in those places where public memory
is traditionally presented (on the grounds of city halls and county courthouses,
main streets, etc.). This raises the important question of whether the Movement's
legacy and memory is best applicable today within African American communities,
or, because Civil Rights memorials are primarily located in black communities,
is the Movement's legacy and memory being segregated anew; a cruel irony given
the goals of the Civil Rights Movement.
Using numerous examples from across the American South, Dwyer and
Alderman's book on the creation of a Civil Rights memorial landscape is a valuable
contribution to the work on cultural landscape, public memory and place making.
They are to be further commended for addressing and conveying complex ideas
through a writing style that is very accessible to advanced undergraduate and
graduate students, as well as the general public. Indeed, their concluding chapter,
which provides a guide to investigating and interpreting memorial landscapes, will
likely be the basis for cultural geography assignments in numerous college classes
around the country (mine included).
In conclusion, if, as Dwyer and Alderman argue, "commemorating the
Movement is but the latest battle in the ongoing campaign for civil rights." (p. 23),
then Civil Rights Memorials and the Geography of Memory provides an important
guidepost to how far we as a society have travelled along that journey and how
much further we have to go.
Jonathan Leib is an Associate Professor and Director of the Geography Program in the Department
of Political Science and Geography at Old Dominion University. His research specialties are in political
geography, cultural geography, and 'race' and ethnicity, with an emphasis on political and cultural
change in the American South.

In the Footsteps of Lewis and Clark: Early Commemorations

and the Origins of the National Historic Trail
By Wallace G. Lewis
Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2010. xiii + 229pp. Photographs, map, notes, bibliography, and
index. $40.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-60732-026-5.

Reviewed by Kevin Blake, kblake@ksu.edu, Department of Geography, Kansas State University,

Manhattan, KS, 66506

In the last decade the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition spawned a
plethora of publications, thus the first thought when picking up In the Footsteps of
Lewis and Clark is whether there is any possible niche for a fresh treatment of the
expedition. The hook in this monograph by Wallace G. Lewis, Professor of History
at Western State College (Gunnison, CO), is its focus on the commemorations of
the Corps of Discovery between the Portland, OR Lewis and Clark Exposition in
1905 and the creation of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail in 1978.

Vol. 43 (2011) No. 2 105

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