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Race, Memory, and Communal Belonging in Narrative and Art: Richmond, Virginia's Monument Avenue, 1948-1996

Barbee, Matthew Mace
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1181594947

Abstract Details

2007, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, American Culture Studies/English.
Locating public memory as a central site in the contested imagination of communal belonging, this study examines the post-World War II history of Richmond, Virginia’s Monument Avenue as a key symbolic location in the cultural politics and political culture of the Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights eras. A New South-era network of memorials to leaders of the Confederacy, Monument Avenue has long stood as the spatial and artistic manifestation of the cultural values espoused through the ideology of the Lost Cause. This ideology enabled the continued cultural and political dominance of a patrician, white elite who ruled Virginia through a politics of paternalism. This paternalism assured white rule and rigid racial segregation but was effected without the overt violence and abuses commonly associated with the post-Reconstruction South. After tracing the history of Monument Avenue from 1890 through 1948— especially in relation to racial segregation and public memory in Virginia—this study provides a detailed analysis of the ways the Civil Rights Movement and anti-integration movements in Richmond used Monument Avenue as a symbol of the larger struggle in which they were engaged. In the post-Civil Rights era, under ideologies of neoliberalism and multiculturalism, the existing Confederate memorials were joined, in 1996, by a new statue of African American tennis champion, writer, and activist Arthur Ashe. This memorial was unveiled only after two years of intense public debate. The second half of this study examines the transformation of Richmond and Virginia’s cultural politics and political culture under neoliberalism and multiculturalism, especially the political career of the conservative Democrat, L. Douglas Wilder who, in 1989, was the first African American to be elected governor of Virginia or any other U.S. State. This history is presented alongside a study of Arthur Ashe’s life as described in his four memoirs, his newspaper columns, and his public appearances. Using the central texts, I foreground the Ashe memorial and its debates by demonstrating that as barriers to racial inclusion were lowered, neoliberalism enabled the reentrenchment of the values associated with white paternalism and the reaffirmation of class hierarchies.
Philip Terrie (Advisor)
280 p.
Richmond; Virginia; Monument Avenue; Arthur Ashe; Doug Wilder; Civil Rights Movement; Memory; Race

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Barbee, M. M. (2007). Race, Memory, and Communal Belonging in Narrative and Art: Richmond, Virginia's Monument Avenue, 1948-1996 [Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1181594947

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Barbee, Matthew. Race, Memory, and Communal Belonging in Narrative and Art: Richmond, Virginia's Monument Avenue, 1948-1996. 2007. Bowling Green State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1181594947.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Barbee, Matthew. "Race, Memory, and Communal Belonging in Narrative and Art: Richmond, Virginia's Monument Avenue, 1948-1996." Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1181594947

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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© 2007, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.