“Ma is in the park”: memory, identity, and the Bethune Memorial

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Woodley, J. ORCID: 0000-0003-2158-1345, 2017. “Ma is in the park”: memory, identity, and the Bethune Memorial. Journal of American Studies. ISSN 0021-8758

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Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875817000536

Abstract

The Bethune Memorial, in Washington D.C.’s Lincoln Park, was erected to celebrate the life and achievements of civil rights leader and educator Mary McLeod Bethune. When it was dedicated in 1974 it became the first monument to an African American, and the first to a woman, on federal land in the capital. This article interprets the monument and its accompanying discourses. It examines how race and gender are constructed in the memorial, and what this suggests about the creation of a collective memory and identity. Bethune was remembered as an American, a black American, and a black American woman. The article explores the racial and gendered tensions in the commemoration, and how the statue both reinforced and challenged a national American memory.

Item Type:

Journal article

Publication Title:

Journal of American Studies

Creators:

Woodley, J.

Publisher:

Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British Association for American Studies

Date:

17 May 2017

ISSN:

0021-8758