Earlier this month, a racist message was scrawled on a sign at the African Burial Ground National Monument (ABG) in lower Manhattan. Occurring just days after the massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue and the murders of two black people in a Kentucky supermarket, the vandal’s violent message (“kill” followed by a racist slur), defacing the country’s largest national monument dedicated to African people, underscores the United States’ ongoing struggle with racism and bigotry. In mid-November, the FBI revealed that some 7,000 hate crimes—about 60 percent of which were motivated by the victim’s race, and 20 percent by religion—were reported in 2017, representing a 17 percent increase from the year before.
“These are the kind of things that are on people’s minds right now, and that’s because of the atmosphere that’s been created,” said City Council member Jumaane Williams at a news conference after the ABG incident. “Cleaning it off doesn’t erase the pain, and it doesn’t erase what’s happening.” Given the public nature of the sacred site (ABG isn’t just a national monument—it’s also a burial ground), the crime, and the community response that followed, has served as an important reminder of the role architecture should play in shaping historical narratives and healing the wounds of the past.
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