In Richmond, Virginia, you encounter monuments, old and new – on Monument Avenue one-hundred-year-old Confederate generals stand alongside, since 1996, a statue honoring African American Tennis icon Arthur Ashe. Nearby, Kehinde Wiley’s new statue, Rumours of War, sits outside the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, a new permanent sculpture moved there following its premiere in New York’s Times Square last year.

But the makeup of Monument Avenue may soon change. Just in the last few days, and after years of activism and organizing across the state, Governor Ralph Northam signed a Confederate Monuments Bill. Starting in summer 2020, local municipalities in Virginia can remove, relocate or contextualize monuments as they see fit.

Last year, in anticipation of the shifts at the state level, Richmond’s Mayor Levar Stoney convened a History and Culture Commission. Its chair, Free Egunfemi Bangura, our guest today, is a tactical urbanist who founded Untold RVA. She pursues ways to memorialize beyond bronze and marble. Bangura illuminates the connections between language and power.

“I promised myself I would always become a historian. And so I just feel like that was the earliest part of when I saw that history was going to be controlled by the dominant narrative, and that the dominant narrative was going to do nothing to try to make sure that people had a balanced understanding of their own history, and that you weren't going to learn anything about Richmond or the struggles of Richmond,” says Bangura.

This episode, we speak to Bangura about her work in “Commemorative Justice,” a term she coined. She also breaks down her projects that have left an imprint on Richmond, and how traveling outside of the country has shifted her thinking on her homegrown projects.

Bangura is a Soros Justice Fellow, a bureau chief at the United States Department of Arts and Culture, and 2019 Monument Lab Fellow. We collaborate together, including on an upcoming project called Shaping the Past, a partnership with the Goethe Institute and German Federal Agency for Civic Education.