Emergent Voices in Material Memories: Conceptualizing Public Voices of Segregated Memories in Detroit

• In Event: Collective Identities and Memories

Abstract

This project explores rhetorical forces of emergent memory and urban space through a concrete relic of Detroit’s past. Built in 1941, the “8 Mile Wall,” was an attempt to stifle black migration into white neighborhoods to preserve property values. Today, over seventy years after its construction, the wall is a material reminder for Detroit’s residents of the city’s racially contentious past. Recently, however, local artists painted the wall with murals of civil rights heroes and iconic moments from America’s civil rights struggle. The 8 Mile wall exists as a site of public memory, compelling visitors to reflect on struggles with housing segregation and racism. This essay proposes a mode of public memory, emergent memory, by which material sites built without commemorative purposes earn mnemonic value over time because to their rhetorical strength. This project invites dialogue toward the presence of mnemonic sites that preserve divergent voices of civil rights struggle.

Author

• Scott Mitchell, Wayne State University