“An Opportunity to Reclaim a Place”: A Critical Analysis of Media, Memory, and BLM Plaza DC

Abstract

In June 2020, protestors in Washington, D.C. gathered peacefully outside the White House fences to protest George Floyd’s murder. Instead of acknowledging George Floyd’s murder or the racist policies that too often result in the death of Black men, women and children, former President Donald Trump staged a photo outside of St. John’s Church. Just a couple days later D.C.’s Mayor Muriel Bowser commissioned local D.C. artists and D.C. government officials to paint in massive yellow letters on 16th Street just outside the White House, “Black Lives Matter.” Lipsitz (2011) asserted that Black expressive culture, like street murals, can function as “repositories of collective memory,” (pg. 60), and can also transform and activate community. Mass media play a critical role in the construction of sites of memory and repositories of collective memory, like Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C. Informed by both Stuart Hall (1997) and Henry Lefebvre’s (1991) concepts of representation, this research will explore the role of newspaper, specifically the Black Press, in the representation of Black Lives Matter Plaza DC (BLM Plaza DC) and its formation of BLM Plaza’s collective memory. My analysis conveyed that the Black Press represented BLM Plaza DC, a site of Black expressive culture, as a Black spatial imaginary. The Black Press’ representation of BLM Plaza DC helped construct BLM Plaza DC as a Black memory-making project that decentered the white gaze and recalled the names of Black people from our past and present that have fought for social and racial justice.