In my work on war memorials, I've been devastated by the emotional amnesia that hits the nation once the survivors of a particular war die. The wreckage of the Civil War and the despair of WWI are two great examples. If anyone notices their monuments at all, they generally just see boring images of soldiers and cannonballs or tablets with columns of names engraved on them. They do not connect them with the suffering that raised them. How to overcome that distancing? How to make a monument convey its core truth to future generations?
Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, AL has gone a great way toward solving the problem. The site of a firestorm of the Civil Rights movement in the early 60's, ithe former "Whites Only" park is now a quiet place (marked as "A Place of Revolution and Reconciliation" at the entrance) filled with trees and a "Freedom Path" that winds through sculptures commemorating what it was like to live as a demonstrator in those years. The most terrifying of these is james Drake's "Police and Dog Attack".
As you walk the Freedom path, you must pass between these two walls of police dogs ready to tear you apart. It constricts your belly. It stops your breathing. You can begin to feel the terror that protestors felt then. And this is its strength. Being part of history makes it real and unforgettable.
(Picture from Heritage Preservation website)
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