This project investigated how U.S. National Historical Landmarks (NHL) (N=approximately 2600), as a form of hegemonic cultural memory, represent the racial past, specifically, white supremacy and colonization. The National Park Service (NPS) manages the NHL program. Rather than examining a specific group or racial dynamic, such as slavery, we sought to develop a national-level analysis that expanded conventional analyses of cultural memory by focusing on white supremacy and colonization. We developed a robust framing that identified specific forms of the racial past, including settler colonization, slavery, nation-building, state-formation and racial capitalism. Based on a analysis of the nomination materials, we ascertained how each NHL represented the racial past. We found that over 90% of all NHLs deny white supremacy and colonization. This denial occurs in various ways:

Erasure (80%) -sites in which there is no mention of the racial past or a person of color

Multiculturalism (7.7%) -sites that mention Indigenous or people of color, but not the larger power relations in which they were embedded; and

Valorization (4.7%) -sites that celebrate white supremacy/colonization, or otherwise redeem whiteness.

In contrast to denial was “acknowledgement.” To qualify as acknowledgement, the nomination materials had to mention racial and colonial processes, such as dispossession, genocide, slavery, discrimination, or racism. Only 7.5% of all NHLs were categorized as acknowledgement. Such sites varied greatly, ranging from NHLs with one sentence mentioning, say, segregation or Manifest Destiny, to entire sites devoted to highlighting slavery, such as the Whitney Plantation.

There was a distinct geography to patterns of representation. Sites of valorization were concentrated in the West, and were associated with Indigenous conquest, Manifest Destiny, and to a lesser extent, Mexican conquest. In contrast, acknowledgement was most common in and near the border of the Confederacy, specifically around sites related to the Underground Railroad. In general, NHLs were far more likely to acknowledge slavery than settler colonization. This indicates a willingness on the part of the nation to acknowledge slavery as part of its past, but an inability to recognize Native dispossession. Despite this, 54% of all plantation NHLs were silent on slavery. Interestingly, sites related to Native Americans were far more likely to be categorized as multicultural. Typically, this meant referring to Indigenous people as part of the “ancient” past, or framing Indigenous/Settler encounters as cultural exchanges, rather than in terms of displacement or genocide.

Although there were very few NHLs related to Asian Americans, they were most likely to be sites of acknowledgement compared to other groups. This is likely because Asian Americans, especially Japanese Americans, were active participants in the development of the sites from the beginning and thus shaped the narrative. Latinas/os were the most underrepresented of all minoritized populations in terms of NHLs.

Given that NHLs do not address the racial past in a substantial way, we explored what they did focus on. Forty-seven percent of all sites were nominated because of their architectural value. Indeed, there are more sites about Frank Lloyd Wright than there are of all Latina/o, Pacific-Islander, and Asian people combined. Another 19% are related to politics and government, and 15% of all sites were associated with the military. Only 3% of all sites centered on a female.

Such profound levels of erasure not only reflect the nation’s difficulty in addressing the racial past, but we argue constitute a form of “white innocence.” White innocence is a refusal to acknowledge the centrality of white supremacy in the creation of the U.S. state, nation and territory. The white nation, that portion of the nation that foregrounds whiteness,  has embraced innocence because given the U.S.’s history of racial and colonial violence, it fears that a meaningful racial reckoning might undermine the moral legitimacy of the nation. In this way, white innocence becomes a conceptual blockage to engaging with the full import of the racial past. Fortunately, the NPS has embarked on a clear shift in state-sanctioned commemoration, as it seeks to develop a more honest account of the past.

This project provided significant training opportunities for eight graduate students, most of whom were women of color, three undergraduate students, and directly contributed to two doctoral dissertations in geography. To date, members of the team have given well over a dozen presentations on the project and one scholarly publication has resulted to date. We are currently in the process of writing a book manuscript based on the results.

Last Modified: 07/05/2024
Modified by: Laura Pulido