National Park Service to Hold Virtual Event: “Monumental Labor: Justice Denied, Injustice Remembered”

Please join us on Wednesday, November 10 from 5:00pm to 6:30pm Central Time for a virtual public event that brings National Park Service staff, scholars, community leaders, and members of the public together to discuss the history and ongoing significance of two commemorative sites in the Midwest - the Dred and Harriet Scott Statue, which is managed by Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument, a National Historic Landmark, near Chicago, Illinois.

Follow this link to register: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_EvPy83xKTqejvc7Xa8jWig

Tune in ten minutes early to see a slideshow with photographs of the two sites.

Each monument calls attention to a pivotal time in 19th century American life. The Dred and Harriet Scott Statue, dedicated in 2012, honors the Scotts' courageous decision to seek freedom from enslavement in 1846, when they filed suit at the Old Courthouse in St. Louis. More than ten years later, their case would end with a Supreme Court ruling that denied African Americans the most basic rights of citizenship.

Completed in 1893, the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument at Forest Home/Waldheim Cemetery occupies an exceptional place in U.S. labor history. It pays tribute to the lives of five men charged with playing a role in an 1886 bombing at Haymarket Square in Chicago and to the broader movement for workers’ rights to which the accused dedicated their lives. Over time, other prominent radicals and labor organizers have been buried in proximity to the Monument, an indication of its continued significance.

The event features: Sue Bennett (Assistant Superintendent, Pullman National Monument); Dr. Melissa Dabakis (Professor Emerita of Art History, Kenyon College); Lynne Jackson (President and Founder, Dred Scott Heritage Foundation); Pamela Sanfilippo (Program Manager, Museum Services & Interpretation, Gateway Arch National Park); and Dr. Geoffrey K. Ward (Professor of African and African-American Studies, Washington University in St. Louis).

Audience members will be invited to participate in the conversation through the chat and Q&A.

This event is the second event in the "Monumental Labor" series, a three-part virtual public event program that explores the memory of work and working peoples in National Parks and National Historic Landmarks. It is organized by Dr. Eleanor Mahoney and Dr. Emma Silverman and made possible by the National Park Service in part by a grant from the National Park Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.