Memorializing Dinah and Reckoning with Enslavement: Community Integration, Arts-based Emplacement, and Racial Justice at Stenton Historic House in Philadelphia

Inequality in Bronze is a two-year project (2018–20) reckoning with the history of slavery at Stenton, a plantation house museum in Philadelphia, by commissioning a new memorial to Dinah, a woman enslaved at the property in the mid-1700s. Drawing on data collected throughout the project, this article argues that historic house museums need to move from “community participation” to “community integration” in their efforts to forefront racial equity. This article asks how we can redress centuries of erasure and the absence of Black lives at historic sites. It offers points of consideration for other historic house museums contemplating similar projects as the collective work to address the legacies of American enslavement continues.

Uzwiak, Beth A. “Memorializing Dinah and Reckoning with Enslavement.” The Public Historian 43, no. 3 (August 1, 2021): 55–86. https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2021.43.3.55.