How America Remembers: An Introduction
He came down the stairs on the right: a man in his late-60s, or early 70s, walking slowly, with a slight stoop. He passed along the long stone slab bearing the names of the fallen from right to left, from West to East, from 1973 back in time, pausing briefly two or...
Katyn Massacre Memorial, Exchange Place, Jersey City, NJ
Over a period of several weeks in the spring of 1940, agents of the NKVD and soldiers of the Soviet Red Army systematically murdered almost 22,000 Polish army officers, political and cultural leaders on orders from Josef Stalin and secret police chief Lavrenti Beria....
Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument, Forest Home Cemetery, Forest Park, IL
Although muffled by the shroud that draped his head and body, the voice of August Spies rang out in cramped prison yard where he, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel stood on the scaffold on 11 November 1887. A fifth man, Louis Lingg, had cheated the...
Confederate Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, Washington, DC
In the aftermath of the Battle of Shiloh, in April 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant wrote that "it would have been possible to walk across the clearing in any direction stepping on dead bodies without a foot touching the ground." It was the bloodiest battle in American...
Irish Famine Memorial, Lincoln Park, Jersey City, NJ
The 18-foot tall Celtic cross in Jersey City’s Lincoln Park marks both a memory of profound trauma and the persistence of the community that remembers it. Erected in 2011 in a public park by the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick, the memorial’s design reaches far back...
Wars of America Memorial, Military Park, Newark, NJ
A crowd of 4,000 gathered in the chilly, late-spring rain to dedicate a memorial to America's war dead in Newark's Military Park. It was 1926, only seven-and-a-half years since the guns fell silent at the end of the Great War. Veterans stood on the dais...
National September 11 Memorial and Museum, New York, NY
The World Trade Center’s twin towers fell on 11 September 2001. Almost immediately, Americans began to seek closure, even if the term hadn’t yet fully worked its way into their daily vocabulary. Writing in the New York Times ten weeks later, Shaila Dewan recalled that...
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza, Chicago, IL
A woman from a nearby office enjoys a cup of coffee, a student is immersed in reading, a man in his late-60s pauses for a few moments to remember a fallen comrade. Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza on Chicago’s Riverwalk is a unique commemorative space. Unlike many...
Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, DC
There are 58,318 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, marking the deaths of a generation of young men, and eight women, in the United States’ military intervention in Southeast Asia between 1956 and 1975. The names are engraved in highly polished...
Liberation Monument, Liberty State Park, NJ
Located at the far southern end of Liberty State Park in New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York City, the Liberation Monument inspires a wide range of responses. Joggers stretching at the base of its massive plinth often seem oblivious to the dramatic...
Civil War Memorial, Lincoln Park, Jersey City, NJ
Striding decisively, with determination in his jaw and a Springfield rifle in his hand, the bronze soldier in Jersey City’s Lincoln Park commemorates “the soldiers of Jersey City who fought in the War of the Rebellion.” It was funded primarily through the largesse of...