Remapping New England: Monuments, Markers, & Collective Memory

A conversation showcasing projects from around New England aimed at making Black history and heritage visible in the built environment.

New England has long repressed the memory of its complicity in Atlantic world slavery, just as it has suppressed the stories of the region's free and enslaved Black and Indigenous populations. These glaring omissions perpetuate historical harms. In plotting a course toward a more equitable future, we are going to need a better map.

ReMAPping New England (Memory + Art + Place) is a historical recovery project aimed at inscribing these effaced narratives both in the built environment and on a dynamic digital landscape in an effort to re-member our communities in all their diversity and radically shift public consciousness toward truth.

The inaugural event in the series, “Remapping New England: Monuments, Markers, and Collective Memory,” will take place Thursday, January 28 at 7:00 pm on zoom. Dr. Kate McMahon of the Center for the Study of Global Slavery at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture will moderate a conversation about public memory and representation with the following panelists:

• Representative Rachel Talbot Ross, Portland Freedom Trail (Maine)

• Charles Roberts, Rhode Island Slave History Medallions (Rhode Island)

• Dennis Culliton, Witness Stones Project (Connecticut)

• JerriAnne Boggis, Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire (New Hampshire)

Indigo Arts Alliance connects Black and Brown artists from around the world with Maine’s artists of African descent through a multidisciplinary artist-in-residency program that embodies a Black-led approach to creativity, community-building, and mentoring.

Atlantic Black Box is a public history project that supports individuals and institutions in researching and reckoning with New England’s role in the Atlantic world slave economy.

This program is made possible in part by a grant from the Maine Humanities Council.