The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute is located in downtown Birmingham, Alabama across the street from Kelly Ingram Park where black citizens were sprayed with fire hoses and confronted by police attack dogs in the spring of 1963. Across the street, on the side of the Institute, is Sixteenth Street Baptist church where four young black girls were killed by a bomb blast on September 15, 1963. To the right of the front entrance of the Institute is a statue that memorializes the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, a key leader of the civil rights efforts in Birmingham during the late 1950s and early 1960s who endured bombings and physical attacks on himself and his family. Visiting the Institute on a Sunday, and walking through the gallery that depicts segregated Birmingham, I met the father of two boys who were the first to integrate an all-white school in Birmingham during that turbulent time. He now serves as a volunteer at the Institute. He took me over to the portion of the gallery devoted to segregated schooling and showed me the picture of himself and his sons on that most difficult day, surrounded by angry white people yelling and shaking fists. In Birmingham, at the Institute, historical conflicts are localized and brought close to home.

Memorials and monuments, including those like the Institute that are devoted to honoring the accomplishments and reminding us of the tragic losses accrued during the civil rights movement, have proliferated in the last decade. Various theoretical explanations of the motivations, social consequences, and material nature of such artifacts have been offered along with close and provocative analyses of spe-