What are the monuments we want for this moment?

I love Illinois. I love how complicated and diverse – racially, ethnically, geographically, philosophically – Illinoisians are. If you drive from Chicago to Equality, Illinois – population 526 – it would take about six hours. You’ll end up on the Ohio River and you’ll see Kentucky across the banks. 

These days we’re getting opportunities to see monuments with new eyes thanks to efforts to bring untold, forgotten, and intentionally marginalized perspectives to the fore. We’ve got an awful lot of monuments in this country. We’ve got a lot of monuments in our state. The Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War documented that 63 of our 102 counties have Civil War Monuments alone. The Monument Lab, (among other things), is on a quest to create a database of our nation’s monuments. Their research is helping us understand our national narrative through the monuments we have and raises important questions about the monuments we DON’T have.

For the Yorks, sharing the history held by Equality is not about being “positive or negative.” The history is something important and special to share, it’s about their community, and it’s about bringing people to a place that has a lot to offer. The Yorks, retired teachers, believe the humanities are about humanity: about love, care, and faith. When asked (as you can see in this video) what she would create a monument about, Nadine dreams into being a monument in every town in Illinois to help remind us that people, even in our state here in America, go hungry.

She makes me wonder: What are the monuments we want for this moment? What monuments might we imagine, together, for one another? How might monuments in Illinois be different from all other monuments?

Inspired by another of our inimitable 2024 Award Honorees, Jane Saks of Project& and Monuments2Movements, we’ll be asking supporters and participants of the May 22nd Luncheon to describe their communities and the monuments they would dream into being.

I hope you can join us in person – or virtually – on May 22nd. The dollars we raise get turned right back around into our communities through grants to small cultural organizations providing vital services, through educational programming that helps adult learners succeed, through free public programs that help us all learn, question, connect, and much more. Because access to public humanities means all of us have a chance to be able to imagine together the monuments that matter.