Book review: Amy Sodaro. Lifting the Shadow: Reshaping Memory, Race, and Slavery in U.S. Museums. Rutgers University Press, 2025
Historical justice, the practice of recognizing and rectifying past injustices, is more widely embraced than ever before, but also, paradoxically, more resisted. For the past several decades, a global “memory boom” has helped to illuminate past injustices, and more initiatives than ever before have materialized to excavate and redress systemic harms committed in the past. At the same time, the public discourse surrounding these violations is frequently contentious, and political actors use their power, increasingly, to silence, erase, and censor aspects of the past that challenge nation-glorifying historical consciousness. Histories of racism and racist violence are simultaneously opening up, in terms of public acknowledgment and the recovery of victims’ experiences, and shutting down, as guardians of national pride seek to limit what can be said about the past.
Amy Sodaro’s Lifting the Shadow engages this paradox and explores how museums in the United States have reckoned (or not) with the history and legacies of slavery. Sodaro, an associate professor of sociology at the Borough of Manhattan Community College CUNY, examines three high-profile museums: the National Museum of African American History and Culture (Washington, DC), the Legacy Museum (Montgomery, Alabama), and Greenwood Rising (Tulsa, Oklahoma), to see how they have challenged, or sometimes replicated, “hegemonic historical narratives” (9), and she analyzes the display techniques and narrative “tropes” these museums employ to guide visitors in their exploration of slavery and its legacies. While these museums, according to Sodaro, are “reflections of and contributions to a growing movement” to redress historical injustices, they have also faced considerable backlash, which is “a reminder of how fraught slavery and its memory continue to be in the United States” (135). As Sodaro shows, these debates also apply to the systems of racial subjugation that have remained intact since the abolition of slavery.
Lifting the Shadow builds on Sodaro’s previous work on memorial museums and the politics of history (2018), and it pulls from key philosophical/theoretical works that deal with the “ethics of memory” and the duty to remember (e.g., Margalit 2000 and Blustein 2008). A key interlocutor is Michael Rothberg, whose work on the “implicated subject” (2019) is crucial to Sodaro’s key contention: “In their exhibits, narratives, and public programming, the NMAAHC, the Legacy Museum, and Greenwood Rising–to varying degrees–tell a story of the implication of white American individuals and institutions in past and present racial injustices. In this they have the potential to […] alter the historical memory of slavery, as well as shape contemporary responses to racial injustice” (35-36). While there are other prominent museums in the United States that commemorate past atrocities (e.g., the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), the museums Sodaro examines here are distinctive because they interrogate violence perpetrated by Americans.
Lifting the Shadow is a compact (150 pp.) and highly readable work. Five analytical chapters are sandwiched between a more personal introduction and a more speculative conclusion. Each of the three museums is treated in its own chapter (chaps. 2-4). For readers, the experience is like visiting each museum with an insightful guide. Outside of these “guided” chapters, Sodaro does a superb job of synthesizing the shared features of these sites and exploring what avenues for engagement exist at each, as well as probing some of the key differences, for example, with respect to the use of historical artifacts and the incorporation of multimedia technologies.
In terms of their potential to enrich visitors’ understanding(s) of the past, Sodaro rates the Legacy Museum more highly than the NMAAHC and Greenwood Rising, although she elaborates on the strengths and weaknesses of all three. All three strive for inclusivity, and they engage with slavery and subsequent racial injustices in such a way as to “spark change” (32); however, the Legacy Museum also encourages visitors to link the history of slavery to ongoing systems of oppression and present racial inequalities. While the Museum has garnered praise in the media for this bold approach and has exceeded the attendance expectations of its creators, it has also been criticized by some for downplaying or ignoring evidence of racial progress. Sodaro cites examples of Alabamans who see the Museum as “stirring things up” or stoking resentment and racial antagonism (86).
In her “Introduction,” Sodaro recounts a walking tour she took with her family in Brooklyn in 2021. The excursion was organized by GrowHouseNYC, a small non-profit organization that has endeavored to preserve and commemorate the Flatbush African Burial Ground located at the intersection of Church and Bedford Avenues. Dutch settlers seized this territory in the early 1600s, and, after expelling its Indigenous occupants (Lenape), they used African slaves to clear the land and build their own homes, churches, and roadways. Using violence and forced servitude, Dutch settlers generated enormous wealth while prohibiting the burial of enslaved Black people in their own (white) churchyards. The Flatbush African Burial Ground is an archaeological testament to this history, yet relatively few Brooklynites today know of its existence.
For Sodaro, the tour was an “eye-opening” experience. Even in a community with a non-white majority, where progressive politics have gained considerable traction, “forgotten sites” like the Burial Ground demonstrate how far most Americans will need to travel, mentally speaking, to comprehend “the sinister past” (2). Lifting the Shadow reminds readers that the history of settler colonialism–and the intertwining of violent land expropriation and chattel slavery–is still clouded in public memory. Americans, in general, know that slavery and “Indian removal” played a role in their nation’s founding and economic prosperity. Still, few have allowed this history to penetrate their consciousness fully, and, as a result, they mostly eschew the idea of corporate (ethical) responsibility.
Where histories of slavery and expropriation have been unearthed, the struggle to translate these into deep, resonant historical knowledge has been an uphill battle. In the U.S., there has been increased engagement with histories of race and slavery, but, at the same time, current systems of anti-Blackness are being erased or trivialized by broad segments of the electorate, and new interventions in the memorial landscape run up against historical amnesia, denial, and ongoing injustices. While some are open to probing engagement, others take refuge in the idea of a “post-racial” society, or they refuse to acknowledge how white supremacy and racist hierarchies deform both the past and present.
Fights over historical memory and America’s commemorative landscape reflect and inform today’s political battles. Museums like the ones interrogated by Sodaro are key sites of memory and, therefore, of debate and struggle. Understanding what resources, techniques, and power these museums leverage in their presentations helps show what progress has been made in confronting histories of slavery and racism, but it also reveals the resistance that still exists around nation-critical approaches to the past. While there is much to admire in America’s newest memorial museums, there continues to be a gulf between critical histories of race and recognition of stubborn inequalities in the present. Visitors to these museums can learn a great deal about slavery and the historical scourge of racism, but, at the same time, these sites must do more to highlight the “ongoingness” of racial trauma and structural inequality. For Sodaro, this is the only realistic avenue for enacting justice.
Sodaro has established herself as a leader in the field of museums and memory. Lifting the Shadow provides a nuanced understanding of how memorial museums function as sites of contested memory. Sodaro highlights the power of museums to shape public discourse around race and justice (while also discussing limitations), and she advocates for inclusive museums that foster a critical historical consciousness. Her book will be an important resource for scholars, students, and anyone interested in understanding the complex interplay between memory, history, and social transformation.
Alexander Karn, Colgate University
References
Blustein, Jeffrey. The Moral Demands of Memory. Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Margalit, Avishai. The Ethics of Memory. Harvard University Press, 2000.
Rothberg, Michael. The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators. Stanford University Press, 2019.
Sodaro, Amy. Exhibiting Atrocities: Memorial Museums and the Politics of Past Violence. Rutgers University Press, 2018.