In this article, I “read against the grain” of a monument to post-WWII immigration and migrant communities. I am concerned with how such monuments, locally situated, might be used in more progressive and transformative histories, ones that harbor the potential to challenge existing public and collective memories of postwar migration and multiculturalism that occur on a national stage and within the ambit of Australia’s heritage industry. This is a study in how discursively marginalized migrant groups, with subaltern narratives about mobility and settlement, claim space for alternative histories in the context of a restrictive official heritage.

This article explores one of the most ubiquitous methods of providing history for the public through a study of the Georgia Historical Marker Program. The marker program, begun in 1951, has undergone changes in stewardship, emphasis, and scholarly rigor in recent years. The evolution of the marker program to be more diverse and inclusive mirrors that of the profession more broadly. This study reveals that what seems like an old-fashioned method of presenting history to the public is still very visible and very much engages the public in discourse about Georgia’s history.

Using local newspapers and tracing the origins of several stories about the development of the sobriquet “Yellow Dog,” this essay demonstrates how the heritage trail markers erected in Moorhead, Mississippi, silence the origins of the term in the suffering of African American men and women who worked in the rolling convict lease camp that built the “Yellow Dog” railroad through the Great Swamp. The marker’s text instead forwards a dubious debate over the term’s origins, excluding its true beginnings in the experiences of African Americans. The heritage trail markers at Moorhead are only one of the examples of how professional state consultants and the Delta Center for Culture and Learning promote racial division—not reconciliation—through erasure of the African American past.

This article discusses an international exhibition that detailed the recent history of African Americans in Pittsburgh. Methodologically, the exhibition paired oral history excerpts with selected historic photographs to evoke a sense of Black life during the twentieth century. Thematically, showcasing the Black experience in Pittsburgh provided a chance to provoke among a wider public more nuanced understandings of the civil rights movement, an era particularly prone to problematic and superficial misreadings, but also to interject an African American perspective into the scholarship on deindustrializing cities, a literature which treats racism mostly in white-centric terms. This essay focuses on the choices made in reconciling these thematic and methodological dimensions when designing this exhibition.

Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial is an example of one memorial site that has successfully managed to retain relevance for nearly one hundred years by adapting to changes in scholarship and the expectations of its visitors. Initially created as a purely commemorative site, it has evolved into one where visitors can actively engage with the Lincoln story. By embracing an interpretive approach to managing the site, the National Park Service has been able to add an educational component to the experience of visiting the memorial that complements its commemorative nature.