Public memorials reflect whom a city chooses to remember. Memorializing ugly historical truths is a chance for public healing. Chicago is reckoning with both.
Earlier this month, the city broke ground on a decade-old promise — the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial, a permanent structure in the Washington Park neighborhood recognizing survivors of police torture under former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge. For 20 years, beginning in 1973, Burge and other police officers at the Area 2 station beat, suffocated and electrically shocked more than 100 Black and Brown folks for dirty confessions. Once completed, the concrete circular structure will include a timeline and names of survivors.
Anthony Holmes is a survivor and reparations recipient who advocated for the memorial.
“This is everything we’ve been trying to tell people. This is our truth,” Holmes said. When the monument is completed next year, neighbors “can feel it and enjoy it, even though it’s got a lot of sadness in it.”
In 2015, the City Council passed a reparations ordinance that awarded Burge survivors an apology from the city, a pool of money, mental health therapy and free tuition to city colleges for them and family members. Chicago Public Schools eighth graders and 10th graders learn about the Burge saga.
Now the final piece of the package is the nation’s first permanent remembrance to survivors of police torture. The timing was delayed but now opportune.
As the country celebrates 250 years of the Declaration of Independence, democracy is fragile. Commemorative T-shirts, fireworks and waxing about American exceptionalism are on full patriotic display. All men (not to mention women) were not considered equal to have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in 1776. The Trump administration labels history as anti-American ideology in K-12 classrooms. White supremacists and their allies push for book bans, stripping college curriculum and attacking scholars — anything critical of the United States. Ignoring the truth about this country is unpatriotic. The memorial to Burge torture victims isn’t.
“We are proud that here in Chicago. We are actually being honest about that past, and that in and of itself is something to celebrate. And we’re grateful that so many people in Chicago are on board with that and understand how important that is,” said Jen Ash, executive director at the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Foundation.
The fight for justice incorporated art in its early days of radical imagination. An exhibition of memorial proposals in 2019 showcased six submissions from commissioned artists. The winner of “Still Here: Torture, Resiliency, and the Art of Memorializing” exhibition was the team consisting of artist Patricia Nguyen and architectural designer John Lee. Chicago architect John Gay will lead construction of the $4.7 million memorial based on the duo’s design.
In 2020, Chicago and other cities around the country evaluated how to manage the racist symbolism of public statues. Public sentiment no longer desired for confederate tributes, odes to segregationists and honoring colonizers. The Mellon Foundation — which assisted financially for the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial — is funding other Chicago projects such as honoring gospel legend Mahalia Jackson and marking the 1919 race riots. Commissioning new landmarks is an opportunity to use physical public history for engagement, because tearing down a Christopher Columbus statue isn’t enough. But erecting a memorial to Chicagoans who endured unfathomable abuse is a start. And is aligned with democracy.
Natalie Y. Moore is a senior lecturer at Northwestern University.