Archinect - News

From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration

2016-08-18T02:09:00-04:00

Last year, the group released a report documenting more than 4,000 lynchings between 1877 and 1950. After that report, Mr. Stevenson launched a project to collect soil from unmarked lynching sites around the country. The soil will be placed in glass jars that will be on display at the museum.

Campbell Robertson highlights plans by the Equal Justice Initiative, to build a national memorial to victims of lynching and open a museum that explores African American history from enslavement to mass incarceration.

h/t @Rob Holmes

Poland to remove Soviet-era memorials

2016-04-05T12:34:00-04:00

The Polish government plans to demolish about 500 Soviet monuments throughout the country, head of the Institute of National Remembrance Lukasz Kaminsky said in an interview with online portal Onet.pl, the RBC news website reported Thursday. Kaminsky — whose institute is responsible for investigating crimes against the Polish nation — said that plans for the demolition of the monuments, would be sent to local authorities in the coming weeks.

According to the report, the monuments will be relocated to museums where they can serve as a "witness of hard times."

Many Soviet war memorial have been vandalized and demolished in Poland, whose population views the Soviet role in the Second World War "with ambiguity or outright hostility."

Russians have reacted strongly to these moves in Poland. In their view, the Red Army liberated Poland from the Nazis.

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New study suggests Aboriginal collective memory reaches back more than 7,000 years

2015-09-22T19:53:00-04:00

Aboriginal society has preserved memories of Australia’s coastline dating back more than 7,000 years [according to] Professor of Geography Patrick Nunn... [His] study looks at Aboriginal stories from 21 places around Australia’s coastline, each describing a time when sea levels were significantly lower than today... present sea levels in Australia were reached 7,000 years ago and as such any stories about the coastline stretching much further out to sea had to pre-date that time.