Southern Poverty Law Center’s Critical Memory Tour
The Southern Poverty Law Center continued its “Critical Memory Tour” in Montgomery on Wednesday, featuring a panel discussion that focused on how both America and Germany confront their complicated histories.
Dr. Andreas Etges from Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich and Dr. Pia Knigge from Auburn University in Montgomery facilitated discussions that delved into how experiences of marginalization have been overlooked and even distorted, risking complete erasure.
This tour serves as a counterpart to a project initiated earlier this year, where a U.S. delegation is set to visit Germany to observe the country’s approach to addressing its troubling Nazi history. Similarly, a German group will visit the United States to examine how the nation portrays its history of slavery and the Confederacy.
Etges referred to this initiative as an investigation into America’s “culture of memory.”
“I define memory culture as the way a society attempts to convey its history, whether through school curricula, history books, or museums at various levels,” Etges said. “This doesn’t imply that everyone presents the same historical narrative, but if you look at the broader context, you can see how a country recounts its history, in this instance about slavery and racism, or the history tied to Germany, Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust.”
The discussion also touched on how state school curricula handle Black history, highlighting that, especially in the South, there’s often a tendency to downplay or sanitize elements of that history.
Knigge shared her experiences visiting concentration camps during her education in Germany and expressed disappointment that American schools seem to lack a similar commitment to taking students to such significant historical sites, a practice that many German students partake in.
This coming Friday, October 10th, the SPLC will be in Birmingham to host another panel featuring SPLC Interim President Brian Fair, former Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley, and former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones. They will discuss efforts to bring justice to the 16th Street Baptist Church bomber decades after the attack, including a second panel that addresses the long-term impacts of the bombing on survivors and their families.
These events are free to the public.
The multi-city tour runs from October 6th to 12th, with stops planned at historic sites in Atlanta and Washington, DC. The Critical Memory Tour combines visits to these sites with public discussions, community conversations, testimonials from social justice advocates, and calls for policy change and educational reform.
