Walking with the Enslaved: The Effects of Memorializing Racial Injustice in the Contemporary United States

Lacking knowledge of historical atrocities, such as slavery, can be associated with the denial of ongoing social and political inequalities. However, memorializing atrocities has been shown to increase support for democratic institutions and reparative policies in the United States and elsewhere. Genevieve Bates (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Geneva Cole (University of Arizona) will investigate whether exposure to a public memorial commemorating the history of chattel slavery in the United States can increase support for contemporary reparations and other racial reconciliation policies. They address this question using an RCT in Richmond, VA that will vary participant exposure to an in-person walking tour of the Richmond Slave Trial, a memorialization project embedded in the contemporary landscape of downtown Richmond that documents the city’s history with slavery and the experiences of the enslaved. They complement the in-person RCT with an online survey experiment using a sample of Virginia residents.