A Song for the Founders: Centering Descendant and Community Voices through an Interdisciplinary Lens

Keywords: community-based research, memory, monuments
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

In the artist’s statement of the Unsung Founders memorial at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC), Do-Ho Suh describes how the table held by the figures represents their oppression and the seats symbolize the unmarked graves of the enslaved (Suh, 2004). However, there was little community input in the design process and the monument has since been targeted by white supremasists and questioned for its location near the former Confederate monument known as Silent Sam (Zaveri, 2019). We are looking to explore what the monument means specifically in the context of UNC, Blackness, and extractive labor practices. Monuments sit at the intersection of geography and archival studies, as they utilize public space to symbolize moments of historical importance. In an effort to challenge traditional geographies and library science models that lead to exclusionary and extractive methods of preservation, we are recentering the descendants of the enslaved (McKittrick, 2006; Caswell, Punzalan, and Sangwand, 2017). Through this project, we will identify how descendants are conceptualizing memorialization of their ancestor’s relationship to UNC and how that legacy is held (or not held) through the Unsung Founders monument. Through the creation of a short film, we hope to mirror Abdurahman and McKittrick’s (2020) conversation on rogue interdisciplinarity. As we are coming from two different disciplines, geography and library science, we believe this combination will echo the collective nature of the project and create a new lens to resituate this monument and the Black production of space at UNC.