Monday’s Monument: Frederick Douglass Memorial, New York, New York
This memorial, located at the northwest corner of Central Park at an intersection known as “The Gateway to Harlem,” honors the African-American abolitionist, orator, writer and statesman Frederick Douglass (1818-1895.) It consists of an eight-foot bronze portrait...
Monday’s Monument: Freedom Charter Monument, Kliptown, Soweto, South Africa
On 26 June 1955, more than 3,000 representatives of resistance organizations made their way through police cordons to gather on a dusty square in Kliptown, 40 kilometers south of Johannesburg. This “Congress of the People” met to draw up the Freedom Charter, an...
Monday’s Monument: Peace Bridge, Derry, Northern Ireland
The Derry Peace Bridge over the River Foyle crosses a 400 year old physical and political gap between two sides of a once bitterly divided community. Its two structural arms head in opposite directions, symbolizing the unification of both communities from the opposite...
Since May 2015, every Monday morning I have been posting a little essay about a peace or social justice monument. For more than a decade, ever since the peaceCENTER was contracted by a national peace & human rights group to develop a workshop exploring strategies for creating memorials about acts of violence and injustice that did not glorify the bloodshed, we have pondered the relationship between the landscape and civic memory.
“I would rather take care of the stomachs of the living
than the glory of the departed in the form of monuments.”
Alfred Nobel
As we showcase these monuments we hope you will join us in this exploration. For now, we’re concentrating on publicly accessible outdoor works. Some are grassroots and homespun; others, more complicated in their funding and execution. They all have a story to tell and we can learn from all of them.
Monday’s Monument: A. Philip Randolph Statues, Washington, DC and Boston, Massachusetts
Asa Philip Randolph (1889 – 1979) was a leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the American labor movement, and socialist political parties. He organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly African American labor...
Monday’s Monument: 20th Century Martyr Statues, Westminster Abbey, London, England
In July of 1998, 10 niches above the west entrance to Westminster Abbey, empty since the Middle Ages, saw the dedication of 10 statues to 20th Century Christian martyrs, people who, according to the Anglicans who administer the Abbey, died for their faith. Among them...
Monday’s Monument: US-Mexico Friendship Park and Monument, San Diego, California / Tijuana, Mexico
The Initial Point of Boundary Between U.S. and Mexico, Monument No. 258, was first established as a cairn of rocks in 1849 following the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. A white marble shaft was manufactured in New York, transported around Cape Horn to San...
Monday’s Monument: Angels Unawares, Vatican City
On September 29, 2019, following the celebration of Mass and the recitation of the Angelus, Pope Francis unveiled a sculpture entitled “Angels Unawares” by Canadian artist Timothy Schmaltz, in St Peter’s Square. It commemorates the 105th World Day of Migrants and...
Monday’s Monument: Le Monument des Fraternisation, Neuville-Saint-Vaast, France
Fraternization—peaceful and sometimes friendly interactions between opposing forces—was a regular feature in quiet front-line sectors of the Western Front during World War I. Although the 1914 Christmas Truce is the most well known, throughout the war soldiers...
Monday’s Monument: Children are Victims of Adults’ Vices, Moscow, Russia
Installed in 2001, this is a group of bronze sculptures created by Russian artist Mihail Chemiakin, located in a park in Bolotnaya Square, just south of the Kremlin. The 13 allegorical sculptures depict alcoholism, exploitation of child labor, indifference, drug...
Monday’s Monument: Henge, Glenrothes, Scotland
This circular henge sculpture by David Harding is comprised of 13 concrete slabs in spiral formation, gradually increasing in height from 2.0m to 2.75m. The inside faces of the henge in are in relief, each with a different decorative relief molding. References include...
Monday’s Monument: Canadian Tribute to Human Right Monument, Ottawa, Canada
The Canadian Tribute to Human Rights is a monumental sculpture designed by Montreal artist and architect Melvin Charney and unveiled by the fourteenth Dalai Lama in 1990. Standing over thirty feet high and constructed of red granite and concrete, the Monument's red...
Monday’s Monument: Thanks-Giving Square, Dallas, Texas
In 1964, four businessmen — Joe O. Neuhoff, Julius Schepps, John M. Stemmons, and Peter P. Stewart — wanted the City of Dallas to be known "not only for its worldly aspirations and economic accomplishments, but also for the enduring heart of its citizens." The...
Monday’s Monument: Ave Quiromantica, Malaga, Spain
The Ave Quiromantica is a bronze sculpture located on Calle Bolsa, Malaga, Andalusia, Spain. It is half dove and half an open hand, the whole sculpture resting on a marble base. It was based on a sketch done by the poet Rafael Perez Estrada, to whom the monument is...
Monday’s Monument: Nordic Peace Monument, Morokulien, Norway & Sweden
In 1910 the Nordic Peace Congress in Stockholm decided that a peace monument should be raised on the border between Sweden and Norway to celebrate 100 year of peace between the countries. The building of the peace monument was finished in 1914. The design reflects a...
Monday’s Monument: Ann Chwazi Lapè, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
The Head of the UN Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), Sandra Honoré, unveiled this peace sculpture in the country's capital Port-au-Prince on September 28, 2017. The installation, which will remain at the National Police Academy, is called ‘Ann Chwazi Lapè’ (meaning ‘Let's...
Monday’s Monument: Los Seis de Boulder, Boulder, Colorado
Awakened Mexican-American students were changing the culture at the University of Colorado Boulder campus, as they were nationwide, and the administration didn't like it. In 1973, in apparent retaliation, they cut off the financial aid of the students who had come to...
Monday’s Monument: Body To Soul, Wellington, New Zealand
The stairs of this sculpture are made of black granite. They evoke the image of a war memorial, without specifically referencing life or death. It shows how to get from the word Body to the word Soul by changing one letter at a time to create a new four letter word....
Monday’s Monument: Monumento à Paz Mundial, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The Monument to World Peace is located near the entrance to the Santos Dumont Airport in Rio de Janeiro, the site of the 1992 Global Forum, a conference of non-governmental organizations held during the 1992 Earth Summit (formally known as the United Nations...
Monday’s Monument: La Paloma, Monterrey, Mexico
Could that building's color be enchilada red? San Antonio readers are probably disoriented by this photo. No, this is not the San Antonio Central Library. It is the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, designed by Ricardo Legorreta in 1991, the same year he won...
Monday’s Monument: Gandhi Statue, Funchal, Madiera, Portugal
The President of the Regional Government, Miguel Albuquerque and India’s Ambassador to Portugal, Nandini Singla, dedicated this bust of Mohandas Gandhi in Praça do Povo (People’s Square) on 5 September, 2019. Gandhi passed through Funchal in 1906 as he traveled from...
Monday’s Monument: Peace Memorial, Urbana, Illinois
In 1968, the University of Illinois’ classes of 1918 and 1919 requested Donald J. Molnar, who was a campus landscape architect at the time, to build a memorial commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of World War I. He envisioned a fountain and a statue in the...
Monday’s Monument: Ensemble pour la Paix et la Justice, Lyon, France
This sculpture, Together for Peace and Justice, by Xavier de Fraissinette, is in the Parc de la Tête-d'Or in Lyon. It was given to the city to commemorate the G7 conference which was held there in June, 1996. The seven figures represent the G7 nations (Canada, France,...
Monday’s Monument: The Sphere, New York, New York
The Sphere was commissioned by the owner of the World Trade Center, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, in 1966. Sculptor Fritz Koenig started work in 1967 in his barn in Bavaria, while the WTC was in the planning stages, and finished it four years later in...
Monday’s Monument: Freedom Rider’s National Monument, Anniston, Alabama
Established on January 12, 2017, one of President Obama's last acts as president, Freedom Riders National Monument shares stories of people and places that gained national attention in the fight against the injustices of Jim Crow laws and eventually led to regulations...
Monday’s Monument: Slave Market Memorial, Stone Town, Tanzania
The Slave Memorial in Zanzibar, Tanzania, recalls how slaves were once held in underground chambers until sold in the nearby slave market. Swedish sculptor Clara Sönäs produced the work in 1998. The chains are real historical artifacts. The slave trade shifted to East...
Monday’s Monument: Slave Trade Marker, Camden, New Jersey
Dedicated in November 2017, the Slave Trade Marker, located in a small park where the waters of the Delaware River once flowed, is a cast-iron sign proclaiming in large gold letters the weight of America’s original sin: “Enslaved Africans Once Sold Here.” More than...
Monday’s Monument: Unsung Founders Memorial, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
The Unsung Founders Memorial at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is located in McCorkle Place, one of the University’s quads. The memorial is a black granite tabletop supported by 300 bronze figurines and surrounded by 5 black stone seats. The...
MONUMENT (n.)
late 13c., “a sepulchre,” from Old French monument “grave, tomb, monument,” and directly from Latin monumentum “a monument, memorial structure, statue; votive offering; tomb; memorial record,” literally “something that reminds,” from monere “to admonish, warn, advice,” from PIE *moneyo-, suffixed (causative) form of root *men- (1) “to think.” Sense of “structure or edifice to commemorate a notable person, action, or event” first attested c. 1600.
Ten Questions to Ask at a Historic Site
In his book Lies Across America, Professor James Loewen posed these ten questions to ask at a historic site.
1. When did this location become a historic site? (When was the marker or monument put up? Or the house interpreted?) How did that time differ from ours? From the time of the event or person interpreted?
2. Who sponsored it? representing which participant groups’s point of view? What was their position in the social structure when the event occurred? When the site went “up”?
3. What were the sponsor’s motives? What were their ideological needs and social purposes? What were their values?
4. What is the intended audience for the site? What values were they trying to leave for us, today? What does the site ask us to go and do or think about?
5. Did the sponsors have government support? At what level? Who was ruling the government at the time? What ideological arguments were used to get the government acquiescence?
6. Who is left out? What points of view go largely unheard? How would the story differ if a different group told it? Another political party? Race? Sex? Class? Religious group?
7. Are there problematic (insulting, degrading) words or symbols that would not be used today, or by other groups?
8. How is the site used today? Do traditional rituals continue to connect today’s public to it? Or is it ignored? Why?
9. Is the presentation accurate? What actually happened? What historical sources tell of the event, people, or period commemorated at this site?
10. How does the site fit in with others that treat the same era? Or subject? What other people lived ad events happened then but are not commemorated? Why?
Want to learn more about monuments? Check out my bookshelf.
Ready to Kill
by Carl Sandburg (Chicago Poems, 1916)
TEN minutes now I have been looking at this.
I have gone by here before and wondered about it.
This is a bronze memorial of a famous general
Riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver on him.
I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be hauled away to the scrap yard.
I put it straight to you,
After the farmer, the miner, the shop man, the factory hand, the fireman and the teamster,
Have all been remembered with bronze memorials,
Shaping them on the job of getting all of us
Something to eat and something to wear,
When they stack a few silhouettes
Against the sky
Here in the park,
And show the real huskies that are doing the work of the world, and feeding people instead of butchering them,
Then maybe I will stand here
And look easy at this general of the army holding a flag in the air,
And riding like hell on horseback
Ready to kill anybody that gets in his way,
Ready to run the red blood and slush the bowels of men all over the sweet new grass of the prairie.
Want more poems? Check out my monumental poetry section.