The Klondike Memory Project: Klondike Memory Project: Race, Counter-Memory, and Planning Processes

This thesis expands on existing community-driven archiving work started by the Klondike-Smokey City Community Development Corporation (KSCCDC) in 2016 to share untold and lesser-known collective histories from Klondike and Smokey City neighborhoods in Memphis, Tennessee. Using a photo essay and fort...

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Main Author: Thompson-Smith, Diamond
Other Authors: Harriel, Holly
Format: Thesis
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2024
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/156123
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author Thompson-Smith, Diamond
author2 Harriel, Holly
author_facet Harriel, Holly
Thompson-Smith, Diamond
author_sort Thompson-Smith, Diamond
collection MIT
description This thesis expands on existing community-driven archiving work started by the Klondike-Smokey City Community Development Corporation (KSCCDC) in 2016 to share untold and lesser-known collective histories from Klondike and Smokey City neighborhoods in Memphis, Tennessee. Using a photo essay and forth-coming cartographic tools as dissemination methods, I aim to support communal healing and reconciliation following long histories of structural racialized disinvestment in these neighborhoods. In this project, we amplify challenges to state narratives that attempt to decontextualize Black history from racist regimes and legacies to subjugate Black and Brown epistemologies. In this thesis, I propose that memory work and acts of truth-telling offer communities that have experienced racial planning and state erasure a pathway toward acquiring justice and repairing structural harm by helping them reaffirm their identities, assert their humanity, hold perpetrators of harm accountable, and envision liberatory futures. I also claim that memory is a tool planners can employ within the reparative framework to help disrupt “rational” planning logic that attempts to discredit embodied experience and epistemologies of Black people as invalid data or “non-data.” Lastly, I insist that using critical cartographic practices such as counter-mapping further disrupts White supremacy and erasure practices embedded within rational planning logic and archival practices by situating the validity of collective memory in place and landscapes.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1561232024-08-15T03:24:50Z The Klondike Memory Project: Klondike Memory Project: Race, Counter-Memory, and Planning Processes Thompson-Smith, Diamond Harriel, Holly Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning This thesis expands on existing community-driven archiving work started by the Klondike-Smokey City Community Development Corporation (KSCCDC) in 2016 to share untold and lesser-known collective histories from Klondike and Smokey City neighborhoods in Memphis, Tennessee. Using a photo essay and forth-coming cartographic tools as dissemination methods, I aim to support communal healing and reconciliation following long histories of structural racialized disinvestment in these neighborhoods. In this project, we amplify challenges to state narratives that attempt to decontextualize Black history from racist regimes and legacies to subjugate Black and Brown epistemologies. In this thesis, I propose that memory work and acts of truth-telling offer communities that have experienced racial planning and state erasure a pathway toward acquiring justice and repairing structural harm by helping them reaffirm their identities, assert their humanity, hold perpetrators of harm accountable, and envision liberatory futures. I also claim that memory is a tool planners can employ within the reparative framework to help disrupt “rational” planning logic that attempts to discredit embodied experience and epistemologies of Black people as invalid data or “non-data.” Lastly, I insist that using critical cartographic practices such as counter-mapping further disrupts White supremacy and erasure practices embedded within rational planning logic and archival practices by situating the validity of collective memory in place and landscapes. M.C.P. 2024-08-14T19:53:26Z 2024-08-14T19:53:26Z 2024-05 2024-06-28T21:02:28.054Z Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/156123 Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) Copyright retained by author(s) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle Thompson-Smith, Diamond
The Klondike Memory Project: Klondike Memory Project: Race, Counter-Memory, and Planning Processes
title The Klondike Memory Project: Klondike Memory Project: Race, Counter-Memory, and Planning Processes
title_full The Klondike Memory Project: Klondike Memory Project: Race, Counter-Memory, and Planning Processes
title_fullStr The Klondike Memory Project: Klondike Memory Project: Race, Counter-Memory, and Planning Processes
title_full_unstemmed The Klondike Memory Project: Klondike Memory Project: Race, Counter-Memory, and Planning Processes
title_short The Klondike Memory Project: Klondike Memory Project: Race, Counter-Memory, and Planning Processes
title_sort klondike memory project klondike memory project race counter memory and planning processes
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/156123
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