As protests swelled over the summer after the death of George Floyd, the country was forced to confront some of its most problematic monuments. Statues of Confederate generals were removed from cities throughout the south. A bronze figure of Christopher Columbus was toppled by protestors in St. Paul, Minnesota.
The men were heroes to some, symbols of oppression to others. Their statues are monuments to past events that have come to be viewed very differently through a modern lens.
And therein lies the inherent complexity of memorials. How do we reconcile the past with our understanding of the present?
During Pitfalls and Promise: Memorializing McLean County’s Past, a virtual program hosted Tuesday night by the McLean County Museum of History, museum Librarian Bill Kemp examined the ways in which McLean County has chosen to remember its own past. Kemp said the events of summer have led to a long overdue examination of what we decide to remember and why.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nR9y7HQloo
Kemp cited the memorialization of Abraham Lincoln’s 1856 "lost speech," delivered in Major’s Hall on the corner of East and Front streets in downtown Bloomington. The speech was a pivotal moment in the antislavery movement and marked the founding of the Illinois Republican party that formed – in part – to fight the expansion of slavery into free territories.
The building in which Lincoln spoke was later torn down to make room for – of all things – a parking garage. And today there are six plaques affixed to nearby wall commemorating the location where Lincoln delivered his lost speech. But none of the those plaques, Kemp said, tells the full story.
“There’s no plaque that reads Abraham Lincoln and other Illinoisans gathered here to organize the Illinois Republican party which was dedicated to halting the spread of black slavery,” Kemp said. When decisions were made about how to memorialize the history of Major’s Hall, “we lost the fact that central to this story is the role of Black people in the great and messy American experiment to rid the nation of slavery,” he said.
A true reckoning of history must include the things we’ve chosen to remember -- and the things we’ve chosen to forget.
Kemp noted two historical sites in Normal – the Simon Malone house and the house of Peter and Fannie Walker Duff. The Malone house, originally located at 504 Kinglsey St., was the first home to be built by a Black person in the Twin Cities. Black homeownership in the area was rare as 19th white landowners often refused to sell land to Black people. Kemp said Jesse Fell, who sold the land to Malone, was one of the only landowners who would do so. The Malone house eventually was lost to arson.
Peter Duff built his family home, once located at 107 W. PoplarSt., on land also purchased from Fell. Duff and his wife raised seven children there, many of whom were educated at the Normal School that later became Illinois State University.
Due to the racist attitudes of the time, Kemp said, none of the Duff children could find employment in the area after graduation; all were forced to move away.
“This is one of the great tragedies of Bloomington-Normal history,” Kemp said.
“We had a small but vibrant Black community and these Black children would be educated -- but there was no gainful employment for them.” Instead, they moved to places like Tulsa, Chicago, Indianapolis, or East St. Louis, Kemp said.
“We’d be a much different community today if these people would’ve stayed and raised families of their own,” he said.
Kemp said the remarkable story of Normal’s 19th century black community, a “look back at what could’ve been, a glimpse at the promise of this nation and its professed ideals,” may itself be worthy of a more permanent memorial.
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