Racial injustice, gun violence and civil rights –– these heavy topics hold a significant place in U.S. history. Monuments and memorials provide opportunities for citizens to grapple with the complex history of the nation and connect it back to the present. Jha D Amazi, a principal and the director of the Public Memory and Memorials Lab for Model of Architecture Serving Society Design Group, specializes in answering questions revolving around how spatializing memory can spark future collective action and provide a more accurate and diverse portrayal of the U.S.’ past.  

This year’s annual Richard Saivetz ’69 Memorial Architectural Lecture titled, “Spatializing Memory,” was held on Feb. 12 and explores the power of these public spaces. Prof. Muna Güvenç (FA) gave a brief introductory speech on the life of Richard Saivetz ’69 and Amazi’s background. Saivetz was an architect and deeply involved with the University. At the time of his death, he was the national president of the Brandeis University Alumni Association and a member of the University’s Board of Trustees. 

Amazi discussed four projects, starting off with the National Memorial for Peace and Justice located in Montgomery, Alabama. According to MASS Design Group’s website, “The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is … the first national memorial to victims of lynching in the U.S.” By highlighting the brutal history of white supremacy and racial terrorism, the site challenges narratives presented by statues that commemorate the Confederate South and encourages the construction of more memorials that confront slavery’s legacy.

The Monument Lab worked with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to examine the current monument landscape of the United States. Monument Lab is a nonprofit public art and history studio who view monuments as dynamic pieces and wish to facilitate critical conversations on their evolution. According to ​​their 2021 National Monument Audit, based on an assessment of 50,000 conventional monuments, half of the top 50 represented individuals who enslaved other people, and only five of the top 50 were Black or Indigenous: Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, Tecumseh, Sacagawea and Frederick Douglass. 0.5% of recorded monuments were dedicated to enslaved people and abolition efforts, and 3% of recorded Confederate monuments used the word “defeat.” In 2022, there were 2,089 Confederate memorials throughout the U.S. and its territories, according to The Southern Poverty Law Center. 

The memorial “recognize[s] and spatialize[s] the truth-telling that is necessary for hope and reconciliation,” Amazi stated. The structure resides on a hill that is the second tallest elevation sight in Montgomery. The memorial consists of 800 hanging Corten steel columns, each representing a county where lynchings took place and the names of lynching victims in those respective counties. The memorial honors “more than 4,400 Black people killed in racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950,” according to the Equal Justice Initiative. 

As visitors walk into the memorial, the ground slopes downward, so the columns rise above spectators to evoke the public hangings that often happened in public squares. A wall lists out the reasons for why people were lynched, and Amazi noted how horrifyingly mundane some of these reasons were. For instance in 1922, Parks Banks was lynched in Mississippi for carrying a photograph of a white woman. In 1894, Caleb Gadly was lynched in Kentucky because he walked behind his white employer’s wife. At the end, there is a place of reflection and contemplation where visitors are positioned towards the open sky, symbolizing hope for the future.  

Acting beyond a place for people to learn and reconcile with the lynching of Black people, it also becomes a “living memorial” whose landscape changes as people confront the nation’s history of racial injustice. Outside of the memorial, “duplicates of each of the monuments lie in the memory bank outside of the primary structure. The corresponding counties are invited to engage in this process of acknowledgment and reconciliation by claiming their monument and placing it as a marker in their own community.” People can see which counties engaged with the process based on whose markers have been moved away from the memorial and to the corresponding county. Some counties have started the process with the EJI; they must prove that they have the resources to receive the marker and programming that contextualizes the marker. Today, not a single marker has been relocated. 

Prior to construction, MASS Design Group worked with the EJI to design an engagement strategy involving soil collection. Community members, students and families of lynching victims collected soil from known sites of lynching in Alabama to draw “active connections to unmarked spaces of terror and…to reclaim those spaces.” Eight hundred jars of soil are on display in the Legacy Museum in Montgomery.  

The next project discussed was the Gun Violence Memorial Project. At the opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, MASS Design Group met the co-founders of Purpose Over Pain, Pamela Bosley and Annette Nance Holt. Bosley and Holt wondered what a memorial dedicated to victims of gun violence would look like. Both of them had sons who passed away due to gun violence. 

According to Amazi, in 2018, there were 100 gun deaths per day in America. Moreover, two-thirds of gun violence deaths were suicides. While “these numbers are shocking [and] powerful … unfortunately, our media [and] our policymakers tend to make it relatively abstract, and it flattens individuals who had full lives into simple numbers, statistics [and] points of data on endless spreadsheets,” she said. “So a question emerged for us, how do we tell the story of the vastness of the epidemic without losing the beauty of the individual lives?” Ultimately, the goal is to transform “statistics into souls.”  

This project drew inspiration from AIDS memorial quilts. Human rights activist Cleve Jones created the idea of a quilt in Nov. 1985. Loved ones made a single square representing someone they knew who died from AIDS. On Oct. 11, 1987, a quilt made up of 1,920 panels was spread out on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., demonstrating the uniqueness of every life lost as well as the nation’s collective failure to address the epidemic. 

The Gun Violence Memorial Project’s goal is to end the gun violence epidemic in the U.S. The piece consists of four glass houses made out of 700 glass bricks. They chose houses because they are symbols of domesticity and familiarity. Additionally, homes play an important role in gun safety, such as making sure that personal guns are locked up. There is no distinction between different types of gun violence, such as suicides or homicides, on the bricks displayed. Most feedback from families states that they do not want the bricks to be differentiated in that manner, as the priority is to celebrate their loved ones. 

Families have the opportunity to contribute an object that represents the personality, interests or skills of loved ones who passed away due to gun violence. Each glass brick would then include the object and an inscription of the victim’s name, birth year and date of their death. Amazi commented on how moving the process was. “The fact that people were willing to contribute precious objects to this project and do so in a way that was both challenging and cathartic for them was truly inspiring for me,” she said. Recordings of families’ memories of their loved ones and explanations of the objects’ significance are played in the exhibit to create a multisensory experience. Currently, they have collected 1,000 objects, worked in approximately 50 different communities and hosted 30 object collection events. Eventually, they want to construct 52 glass houses in total to represent every state and jurisdiction in the U.S., as well as every week of the year to illustrate the enormity of the gun violence epidemic. 

The memorial was displayed in the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2019 until it moved to the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. in 2021. The project’s next stop is Boston with two glass houses at the Institute of Contemporary Art, one at Boston City Hall and the last one at the MASS Design Group’s Boston studio’s gallery. Boston is particularly meaningful for Amazi since she is a native Bostonian and the daughter of a Boston police officer who has survived a gunshot wound.   

Next, Amazi discussed the Sugar Land 95 Memorial Cemetery in Sugar Land, Texas, which is currently unfinished. On Feb. 29, 2018, during the construction of the James Reese Career and Technical Center in Fort Bend Independent School District, they discovered a historic cemetery and found 95 individuals who are now known as The Sugar Land 95. Two and a half years of research concluded that The Sugar Land 95 are most likely Black citizens sentenced to work in convict labor camps in Fort Bend County, Texas. The district welcomed the idea to utilize the cemetery discovery to educate people on The Sugar Land 95 and the convict leasing program that operated in Texas from 1867 to 1910. To Amazi’s knowledge, this would be the first memorial to commemorate an unmarked grave. 

To properly honor the deceased, the MASS Design Group wanted to replicate a homegoing. As opposed to a funeral, a homegoing emphasizes a celebratory nature. Some people thought that death offered freedom for enslaved people. The emotional journey will be reflected in the memorial through four stages. Firstly, the wake is where people come to accept their loss. After that there will be the service, which Amazi described as “A celebratory remembrance of the deceased and an emotional expression through song, dance, shouting, story sharing and so forth.” The third phase is the procession, representing the journey to a burial ground. Lastly, the repast is the gathering after the funeral and symbolizes the height of the celebratory moment.

There is a strong educational component to the memorial, and it is designed to act as an outdoor classroom. To pair with the structure, they plan to develop a curriculum and instructional resources that analyze the historical significance of the site and its connection to slavery, convict leasing and modern incarceration. Identifying The Sugar Land 95 and possible descendants through DNA analysis and genealogical studies is a priority as well. 

Ending on a local note, “The Embrace” and the 1965 Freedom Plaza are located in the Boston Common. MASS Design Group and artist Hank Willis Thomas entered a design competition for a monument honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King in Boston that was kickstarted by the non-profit Embrace Boston. Embrace Boston works to make the city more equitable. There were over 163 national and international entries, but MASS Design Group’s proposal was chosen on March 4, 2019. This project will be the first to be completed in the Boston Common in over 30 years.  

Amazi pointed out the Kings’ rich history in the city of Boston –– it’s where they first met, fell in love and had their first home. Thomas’ inspiration for “The Embrace” originates from a photo taken during a news conference following the announcement that Dr. King had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. In the image, Dr. King is hugging Mrs. King, and Thomas wanted to capture the power of love evoked by the gesture. 

Locals could nominate individuals to be recognized in the 1965 Freedom Plaza. The plaza pays tribute to 65 local civil rights activists and leaders, and Amazi stated that “This inclusion intentionally moves us away from the singular hero worship that we often see in memorials like this and towards an honoring of collective action.” The structure intends to celebrate the Kings’ contribution to the Civil Rights Movement and acknowledge the vital collective action needed for the movement’s success. 

Similar to the previously discussed memorials, the project has a second phase that augments the memorial’s mission of promoting social justice values. The Embrace Center in Roxbury will support Embrace Boston’s mission and is currently in construction. 

Amazi encourages people to think about memorials and monuments with a more active and forward-looking perspective. Spatializing history is a crucial first step to recognizing key issues that remain relevant today. However, for long-term change, implementing initiatives within these public structures that invite community engagement and reconciliation transforms these static spaces into living ones.