Finding a Way Forward

Abstract

The way that nations commemorate their pasts has profound implications for the futures they are able to imagine and, ultimately, enact. This chapter compares three temporalities—ways of mapping the relationships among past, present, and future—that compete for predominance in U.S. memory today. Former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan revived a nostalgic temporality grounded in monumental images of the nation’s past, such as South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore. By contrast, his predecessor, Barack Obama, advanced a progressive retelling of U.S. history, a narrative reinforced in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. Finally, the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) rose to prominence with a traumatic narrative, articulated at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, and in public interviews and appearances by EJI founder Bryan Stevenson. Both progressive and traumatic narratives offer crucial resources for responding to the resurgence of White nationalism. Whereas progressivism provides the uplift and inspiration that have often sustained successful social movements, an emphasis on trauma is a crucial antidote for the distortions of nostalgia, bringing the ongoing legacies of past violence clearly into view.