Community Heritage Activism in the American South: Black Counter-reenactments as Mnemonic Restitution

Bond, L. and Hensby, A. 2025. Community Heritage Activism in the American South: Black Counter-reenactments as Mnemonic Restitution. Memory Studies. 18 (2).

TitleCommunity Heritage Activism in the American South: Black Counter-reenactments as Mnemonic Restitution
TypeJournal article
AuthorsBond, L. and Hensby, A.
Abstract

This paper explores the use of counter-reenactment by Black community heritage organisations in the Deep South. By counter-reenactment, we refer to the creation and dissemination of a Black living history that challenges the white master-narrative of the regional past. In Sadiya Hartman’s (2022, 85) terms, counter-reenactments ‘redress’ the suffering of historical Black bodies by ‘counterinvesting in the [contemporary] body as a site of possibility’. These performances are commonly staged at sites of historic violence where tangible Black heritage has been erased. Using Miss Lou Heritage Group & Tours from Natchez, Mississippi, as a case study, we suggest that counter reenactments rematerialise African American history in a memorial landscape where Black experience is structurally invisibilised, enacting a form of ‘mnemonic restitution’ (Tillet, 2012) that resists the depleting effects of everyday racism, past and present.

Keywordscounter-reenactment
racism
civic estrangement
mnemonic restitution
right to a city
heritage activism
tangible heritage
intangible heritage
JournalMemory Studies
Journal citation18 (2)
ISSN1750-6980
1750-6999
Year2025
PublisherSAGE Publications
Accepted author manuscript
License
All rights reserved

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