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This issue of Radical History Review revisits the intersection of public history—long a concern of the journal–and the burgeoning field of critical memory studies. Contributors explore contested terrain where radical “memory activists,” populist nationalists, and self-proclaimed preservers of tradition have battled to place their stamp on public narratives about the past.
Articles Jamille Pinheiro Días and Lúcia Sá expose Sao Paulo’s Bandeirantes monument’s links to colonial trauma and anti-Indigenous racism in Brazil. Claire Brennan and Ana Stevenson explore local efforts to take down statues of Capt. James Cook—commercial and official alike—in the name of a more inclusive history in Oceania. Sergio Gardenghi Suiama reflects on the contested memories of Rio’s Valongo Wharf, the largest transatlantic slave trade port in the Americas. Claire Payton traces the shifting meanings of a memorial to the Haitian Revolution as it weathered multiple twentieth century regime changes. Jessica Moody reflects on a collaborative public history/public arts project that utilizes a dance performance to memorialize the history of transatlantic enslavement in Bristol. Inge Dornan and Hannah Whittaker describe a local campaign by the defenders of the British imperial legacy to preserve the memory of a soldier implicated in a colonial massacre in southern Africa. Amber Nickell compares two distinctive sites of Holocaust memory in Ukraine, one in Kiev and the other in rural Transnistria.
Interventions Susan Walker revisits Lowndes County, Alabama, to speak with the descendants of enslaved families who now sew quilts to honor the names of their ancestors. Jane Komori recalls the rock gardens crafted by her Nisei grandfather as he sought to come to terms with his three years of incarceration based on his ancestry by the Canadian government during WWII.
Teaching Radical History Rosemary Spooner takes us on a critical walking tour of an urban park in Glasgow, revealing its hidden histories.
Cover: Le Negre Marron (The Black Maroon), Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 1970
