Within the last decade or so, the United States has begun to commemorate and memorialize through monuments the contributions of Black women. In contrast, historically and generally most all of the US monuments, including commemorative memorials of wars and fallen soldiers, feature prominent white, male figures. Examples include George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, selected Civil War generals, plus major Civil Rights activists like MLK Jr. In most all these cases, the subjects of collective memory and memorialization are white men, with a few exceptions. Since the advent of the MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter, advocates are calling for greater inclusion of minority women and their contributions.  A case in point is the scarcity of memorials featuring minority black women. Memorials and monuments are rich historical and political evidence of how a society favors specific ethic groups.  The more monuments, the more valued is that ethnic group, the less monuments, the less valued. Therefore, as monuments of a minority group begin to grow, we can learn much about race, politics, and ethnic value of this group. For this reason, an analysis of two monuments of Black women should provide an important and crucial discussion of the collective US formation of race and national perspective.

In this paper, I will analyze the meaning and memorialization behind two monuments of Black women in the United States in connection to the parameters of nation and race. The first monument located at the University of Pennsylvania, called “Brick house” (Figure 1), exists as a communal monument, therefore is not of any historical woman. The second monument is a collection of three different women, each offered in an individualistic manner, who each influenced the city of Boston. However, within the three women memorialized (Figure 2), I am choosing to discuss only one of the three, Phillis Wheatley, the first African female poet in the United States. Both monuments, Figures 1 and 2, provide a different commentary on the contributions of a group of women who have formed part of the fabric of our nation. The two monuments also offer material to analyze, critic, and discuss race and racism. My analysis and comparison will interweave the theory of history and memory by Patrick Hutton (History as an Art of Memory) as well as Toni Morrison’s (The Source of Self-Regard) theory of women, race, and memory to flesh out the hidden power of each.

Hutton and Morrison as applied to monuments

Patrick Hutton, in his work History as an art of memory, states: “Historical memory… is a function of the power to determine the way in which the past is to be presented” (Hutton, 1993: p. xxiv). Hutton also states that history is best appreciated as an art of memory (Hutton, 1993: p. xxiv). For Hutton, memory, the skill or art of remembering, is a “resource for recovering lost worlds” (Hutton, 1993: p. xviii). History is “a way of codifying and lending substance to valued traditions, notable those that incorporated notions of development or progress” (Hutton, 1993: p. xviii). Hutton describes how the lines between history and memory become blurred. For this reason, other voices, those not always described in history books, are worthy of memory and must be included in the “official narrative”. Hence his application applies to analysis of other voices, those voices of stories hidden within monuments.

However, to push this analysis further, Toni Morrison’s literary pieces connect history and memory concerning, women, race, and history. Throughout history, those who have defined what connotates history have been males. Morrison describes the nature of men’s universal dominance with these words:

…the concept of masculinity still connotes adventure, integrity, intellect, freedom, and, most of all, power. “Man is the measure of man” is an easily dismissed observation in a modern context, but masculinity is very much the measure of adulthood (personhood). Proof is everywhere. It shapes the wishes of women who believe they are born to please men as well as those who want to have what males claim for themselves. It ignites the tough, thorough, just, and reasonable. Rigorous intellect, commonly thought of as a male preserve, has never been confined to men – but it has always been regarded as a masculine trait…The problem, therefore, is this: the tacit agreement that masculinity is preferable is also a tacit acceptance of male supremacy… (Morrison, 2019: p. 92-3)

Morrison’s message demonstrates the power wielded by males in general. U.S. society in general views males with different standards, rules, behaviors, and characteristics than females. This viewpoint of a masculine superiority plays a critical role in terms of history, in terms of (collective) memory, in terms of monument.

              In addition to Morrison’s description of male dominancy, the role that race plays into the dialogue of history and memory demonstrates another important facet of my paper. Morrison states:

I have been thinking for some time now about the validity or vulnerability of a certain set of assumptions conventionally accepted among literary historians and critics and circulated as “knowledge”. This “knowledge” holds that traditional, canonical American literature is free of, unformed by, and unshaped by the four-hundred-year-old presence of first Africans and then African Americans in the United States. It assumes that this presence – which shaped the body politic, the Constitution, and the entire history of the culture – has had no significant place or consequence in the origin and development of that culture’s literature…There seems to be a more or less tacit agreement among literary scholars that because American literature has been clearly the preserve of white male views, genius, and power, those views, genius, and power are removed from and without relationship to the presence of black people in the United States – a population that antedated every American writer of renown and was perhaps the most furtively radical, impinging force on the country’s literature. (Morrison, 2019: p. 140)

In this quotation, Morrison unpacks a description of how racial bias in history and collective memory have played on the national literature of this country. The canon has historically and traditionally celebrated male, Caucasian authors. Black individuals have possessed little to no impact within American literature. They have not been remembered or celebrated, yet they have formed part of the very fabric of American society and culture. One cannot help but ask, what does this exclusion state about African Americans? Have they truly not had impressive authors and individuals to celebrate? Or does this lack of contribution narrate a different story? According to Morrison, historical and literary memory portrays a limited and lacking picture, one that demonstrates a lack of appreciation and respect for the African and African American voice. Granted, in this paper, I do not address specifically voices but rather monuments. However, if voice and memorialized contributions of African Americans via monument possess any correlation, an argument regarding voice directly connects to memory, monument, and contribution.