Few memorial landscapes have changed as much over the past decade than Montgomery, Alabama, the “Cradle of the Confederacy.” At one time, the city’s best known historic site and museum was the first White House of the Confederacy, where Jefferson Davis resided between February and May 1861.
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If you blinked, you might have missed the historical marker dedicated to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn at the site of her childhood home in Concord, New Hampshire, on May 1, 2023. That’s because Republican lawmakers had it removed just two weeks after it was unveiled, arguing that Flynn did not deserve such recognition because she was “un-American.”
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As a child, Gwen Trice caught sight of a ragged scar along her father’s shoulder – a mark from a long-ago logging accident. Lafayette “Lucky” Trice was a loving but imposing figure, and much of his early life was a mystery to his young daughter.
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Lowell National Historical Park (LOWE) was founded in 1978 by the National Park Service. A sprawling site that includes the historic downtown of commercial Lowell, the canal systems, and the old mill buildings and boarding houses, the park allows visitors to trackthe evolution of industrial America in the 1800s.
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Karen Sieber tells us of the effort to honor the memory of slain union organizer Ella May Wiggins and the struggle for power by textile workers in the South.
The city of Gastonia, North Carolina, has grappled with how to remember the Loray Mill Strike of 1929 for decades.
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Editor: On March 25, 2023 a new memorial will be placed at the site where 123 women and 23 men garment workers, mostly recent immigrants, died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Mary Anne Trasciatti tells of the long road to bring this memorial to New York City.
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Monumental Labor is a three-part public event series and podcast that explores the memory of work and working peoples in National Parks and affiliated sites through their representation in monuments and memorials.
Why have certain events, labor leaders, or workers received attention, while others remain unrecognized?
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“The obrera recognizes her rights, proudly raises her head and joins the struggle, the time of her degradation is over, she is no longer a slave sold for some coins, she is no longer a servant, but the equal of a man,” wrote Texas border native Jovita Idar in 1911.
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On Friday, September 3, 2021, the curtain opened on harmony singers Heather Hannah & Company at the Battle of Blair Mountain Centennial Kickoff Event at the Charleston, WV Civic Center.
“It’s such an honor to be here, to be standing up here with you all,” Hannah said, “commemorating this centennial of courage, commemorating the courage it took for a miner to look at someone else who maybe didn’t speak the same language as him or come from the same country as him or pray to the same god and say, ‘I trust you with my life, and with you I’ll lay down mine if I need to, because there’s something bigger here that needs to be taken on.’”
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