Some monuments are larger than life. And they reinforce this idea that monuments are supposed to inspire awe and maybe even dwarf us. But what if a monument was human-scaled and made us aware of our bodies in space? We don’t often think about the design choices that go into making a monument, but more and more, a new generation of artists and designers are reimagining what a monument can look and feel like, and the kinds of stories they can hold. In this episode, we travel to Montgomery, Alabama to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, to uncover how they took inspiration from Holocaust memorials in Germany to memorialize the horrific legacy of lynching in this country. And we look at decentralized memorials that are using technology to help bring monuments to the past into the future.

<description>
 &lt;p&gt;Some monuments are larger than life. And they reinforce this idea that monuments are supposed to inspire awe and maybe even dwarf us. But what if a monument was human-scaled and made us aware of our bodies in space? We don’t often think about the design choices that go into making a monument, but more and more, a new generation of artists and designers are reimagining what a monument can look and feel like, and the kinds of stories they can hold. In this episode, we travel to Montgomery, Alabama to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, to uncover how they took inspiration from Holocaust memorials in Germany to memorialize the horrific legacy of lynching in this country. And we look at decentralized memorials that are using technology to help bring monuments to the past into the future.&lt;/p&gt;
 </description>

Monuments of the Future


        Some monuments are larger than life. And they reinforce this idea that monuments are supposed to inspire awe and maybe even dwarf us. But what if a monument was human-scaled and made us aware of our bodies in space? We don’t often think about the design choices that go into making a monument, but more and more, a new generation of artists and designers are reimagining what a monument can look and feel like, and the kinds of stories they can hold. In this episode, we travel to Montgomery, Alabama to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, to uncover how they took inspiration from Holocaust memorials in Germany to memorialize the horrific legacy of lynching in this country. And we look at decentralized memorials that are using technology to help bring monuments to the past into the future.
      

Bringing Monuments Home

Stone Mountain Park is Georgia's most popular attraction, and its centerpiece is a massive rock carving that depicts three Confederate leaders who fought a Civil War over the right to own slaves and lost. It’s the largest Confederate monument in the entire world. The mere presence, let alone the popularity of Stone Mountain raises this question: If people can be oblivious or indifferent to something as big as that carving, then what about the rest of the nation that lives not only with monuments but with streets, bridges, buildings and schools named for the Confederacy? Confederate monuments have started coming down, but the struggle around what to do with Stone Mountain speaks to how difficult it can be to truly see and confront the stories being told all around us and tell the ones we need to hear.

<description>
 &lt;p&gt;Stone Mountain Park is Georgia's most popular attraction, and its centerpiece is a massive rock carving that depicts three Confederate leaders who fought a Civil War over the right to own slaves and lost. It’s the largest Confederate monument in the entire world. The mere presence, let alone the popularity of Stone Mountain raises this question: If people can be oblivious or indifferent to something as big as that carving, then what about the rest of the nation that lives not only with monuments but with streets, bridges, buildings and schools named for the Confederacy? Confederate monuments have started coming down, but the struggle around what to do with Stone Mountain speaks to how difficult it can be to truly see and confront the stories being told all around us and tell the ones we need to hear.&lt;/p&gt;
 </description>

Stone Mountain and Xernona Clayton


        Stone Mountain Park is Georgia's most popular attraction, and its centerpiece is a massive rock carving that depicts three Confederate leaders who fought a Civil War over the right to own slaves and lost. It’s the largest Confederate monument in the entire world. The mere presence, let alone the popularity of Stone Mountain raises this question: If people can be oblivious or indifferent to something as big as that carving, then what about the rest of the nation that lives not only with monuments but with streets, bridges, buildings and schools named for the Confederacy? Confederate monuments have started coming down, but the struggle around what to do with Stone Mountain speaks to how difficult it can be to truly see and confront the stories being told all around us and tell the ones we need to hear.
      

Staring Down Stone Mountain

Pearl Harbor National Monument is the most visited place in Hawaii, and it’s one of two national sites recognizing a foreign assault on U.S. soil. The monument tells the story of the Japanese Empire’s sneak attack on the island of Oahu in 1941 and how the U.S. declared war on Japan and entered World War II the following day. But the U.S. government did something else that’s not often talked about: martial law was immediately declared in Hawaii, followed by the incarceration of men, women and children of Japanese ancestry. Just over ten miles from Pearl Harbor is the Honouliuli National Historic Site. It was Hawaii's largest and longest-serving World War II confinement camp, and it’s now being developed by the National Park Service as a new memorial space that will eventually be open to the public. It’s only when we look at Pearl Harbor and Honouliuli together – and see them as inextricably part of the same story – that we can reconcile who we Americans believe ourselves to be...with who we sometimes actually are.

<description>
 &lt;p&gt;Pearl Harbor National Monument is the most visited place in Hawaii, and it’s one of two national sites recognizing a foreign assault on U.S. soil. The monument tells the story of the Japanese Empire’s sneak attack on the island of Oahu in 1941 and how the U.S. declared war on Japan and entered World War II the following day. But the U.S. government did something else that’s not often talked about: martial law was immediately declared in Hawaii, followed by the incarceration of men, women and children of Japanese ancestry. Just over ten miles from Pearl Harbor is the Honouliuli National Historic Site. It was Hawaii's largest and longest-serving World War II confinement camp, and it’s now being developed by the National Park Service as a new memorial space that will eventually be open to the public. It’s only when we look at Pearl Harbor and Honouliuli together – and see them as inextricably part of the same story – that we can reconcile who we Americans believe ourselves to be...with who we sometimes actually are.&lt;/p&gt;
 </description>

Pearl Harbor National Monument and Honouliuli National Historic Site


        Pearl Harbor National Monument is the most visited place in Hawaii, and it’s one of two national sites recognizing a foreign assault on U.S. soil. The monument tells the story of the Japanese Empire’s sneak attack on the island of Oahu in 1941 and how the U.S. declared war on Japan and entered World War II the following day. But the U.S. government did something else that’s not often talked about: martial law was immediately declared in Hawaii, followed by the incarceration of men, women and children of Japanese ancestry. Just over ten miles from Pearl Harbor is the Honouliuli National Historic Site. It was Hawaii's largest and longest-serving World War II confinement camp, and it’s now being developed by the National Park Service as a new memorial space that will eventually be open to the public. It’s only when we look at Pearl Harbor and Honouliuli together – and see them as inextricably part of the same story – that we can reconcile who we Americans believe ourselves to be...with who we sometimes actually are.
      

Hell Valley, Hawai‘i, USA

The legacy of slavery in this country is undeniable. And yet we’re a long way from acknowledging how fundamental it is to how America came to be, and how it should be discussed and represented. Those tensions are playing out in our monuments - including in places we don’t often associate with slavery, like New York City. On Wall Street sits Federal Hall, a place dedicated to many firsts: the First Amendment, the first Capitol building and the first U.S. president. Less than a mile away is the African Burial Ground, dedicated to the 419 enslaved Africans buried there. Considered together, these two National Park Service sites illuminate how we talk about the birth of the United States, and the enslaved people who made this new country possible.

For more on the show, visit <a href="http://prx.org/monumental" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">prx.org/monumental</a>.

<description>
 &lt;p&gt;The legacy of slavery in this country is undeniable. And yet we’re a long way from acknowledging how fundamental it is to how America came to be, and how it should be discussed and represented. Those tensions are playing out in our monuments - including in places we don’t often associate with slavery, like New York City. On Wall Street sits Federal Hall, a place dedicated to many firsts: the First Amendment, the first Capitol building and the first U.S. president. Less than a mile away is the African Burial Ground, dedicated to the 419 enslaved Africans buried there. Considered together, these two National Park Service sites illuminate how we talk about the birth of the United States, and the enslaved people who made this new country possible.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For more on the show, visit &lt;a href="http://prx.org/monumental" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"&gt;prx.org/monumental&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 </description>

Federal Hall and the African Burial Ground in NYC

The legacy of slavery in this country is undeniable. And yet we’re a long way from acknowledging how fundamental it is to how America came to be, and how it should be discussed and represented. Those tensions are playing out in our monuments - including in places we don’t often associate with slavery, like New York City. On Wall Street sits Federal Hall, a place dedicated to many firsts: the First Amendment, the first Capitol building and the first U.S. president. Less than a mile away is the African Burial Ground, dedicated to the 419 enslaved Africans buried there. Considered together, these two National Park Service sites illuminate how we talk about the birth of the United States, and the enslaved people who made this new country possible.

For more on the show, visit <a href="http://prx.org/monumental" target="_blank">prx.org/monumental</a>.

In NYC, A Tale of Two Monuments

When it comes to women and monuments in the U.S., we seem to prefer mythical or allegorical women – think a lady in robes holding the scales of justice in front of a courthouse. It’s rare to see real women being honored for their actual accomplishments. But for decades, there was one statue in Wyoming that was an exception. Wyoming is known as the “equality state” because it was the first in the nation to pass women’s suffrage. And it recognized that history with a statue of Wyoming’s first Justice of the Peace and suffragist, Esther Hobart Morris, which stood outside the state Capitol building for 60 years. But today, that statue of Morris lives underground in the Capitol basement. In this episode, we look at what the story of this one monument reveals about how women are mythologized and erased.

<description>
 &lt;p&gt;When it comes to women and monuments in the U.S., we seem to prefer mythical or allegorical women – think a lady in robes holding the scales of justice in front of a courthouse. It’s rare to see real women being honored for their actual accomplishments. But for decades, there was one statue in Wyoming that was an exception. Wyoming is known as the “equality state” because it was the first in the nation to pass women’s suffrage. And it recognized that history with a statue of Wyoming’s first Justice of the Peace and suffragist, Esther Hobart Morris, which stood outside the state Capitol building for 60 years. But today, that statue of Morris lives underground in the Capitol basement. In this episode, we look at what the story of this one monument reveals about how women are mythologized and erased.&lt;/p&gt;
 </description>

Esther Hobart Morris statue


        When it comes to women and monuments in the U.S., we seem to prefer mythical or allegorical women – think a lady in robes holding the scales of justice in front of a courthouse. It’s rare to see real women being honored for their actual accomplishments. But for decades, there was one statue in Wyoming that was an exception. Wyoming is known as the “equality state” because it was the first in the nation to pass women’s suffrage. And it recognized that history with a statue of Wyoming’s first Justice of the Peace and suffragist, Esther Hobart Morris, which stood outside the state Capitol building for 60 years. But today, that statue of Morris lives underground in the Capitol basement. In this episode, we look at what the story of this one monument reveals about how women are mythologized and erased.
      

The Suffragist in the Basement

The landscape of public memory is shifting. As we re-examine the plaques in our parks and sculptures on our streets, we grapple with what to do with them. Once we learn the stories these objects tell about who we are, will tearing down statues and renaming schools be enough?

Monumental interrogates the state of monuments across the country and what their future says about our own. In this 10-episode series, host and author Ashley C Ford and a team of audio journalists from around the country will piece together the complex stories behind some of the thousands of monuments that exist in every corner of the U.S. Listen to Monumental weekly on Mondays beginning October 30, 2023.

For more information about Monumental, visit our website at <a href="http://www.prx.org/monumental" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.prx.org/monumental</a>

Monumental

Details

Recent Episodes