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Memoryscapes in Transition: Black History Museums, New South Narratives, and Urban Regeneration

In this essay, I examine the ways in which African American history museums may serve as vehicles for redevelopment in southern cities marked by racial conflict. I use as case studies the American Civil War Center in Richmond, Virginia, and the African American Freedom Foundation Civil War Memorial and Museum in Washington, DC, to illustrate the ways in which museums foregrounding the black experience of slavery and the Civil War aid in the rebuilding of blighted urban areas through the reconstruction of suppressed histories. I argue that the museums’ deployment of rhetorical discourses of reconciliation and belonging help position urban renewal as a productive, rather than destructive, process.