Remembering Rondo: Tracing geographies of place and Black counter memory in Saint Paul
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Keywords: Black geographies, Memory, Twin Cities
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract
Authors:
Parvathy Binoy, Colgate University
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Abstract
This paper puts Black geography in conversation with Memory studies and Afro-pessimism to conceptualize the memorialization of Saint Paul’s historic neighborhood, Rondo. It draws on oral histories, ethnographic and visual documentation of memorial performances and sites like the Rondo commemorative plaza and the Rondo days celebration in the Twin Cities, to conceptualize Black counter-memory, a material and spatial radical counter narrative to the racialized memory of anti-Blackness – in this case the displacement and loss wrought on Black residents of Rondo when the I-94 highway was built through the heart of the neighborhood.
Remembering Rondo: Tracing geographies of place and Black counter memory in Saint Paul
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Paper Abstract