Empowering Social Justice and Equality by Developing a Feminist Intersectionality Framework to Increase the Inclusiveness of Detroit Historical Markers.

Historical markers are important because they create cultural narratives and memories to educate the public about achievements of historic people that embody ideal cultural values, to inspire modern people to aspire to such accomplishments and take pride in their history. This paper reports the results of a form of activist archaeology involved in conducting critical feminist intersectional research to promote social justice in representations of America's heritage on historical markers in Detroit, Michigan, USA. Existing historical markers are very predominantly for sites associated with white men, with far fewer sites associated with minorities or women. The dominance of white men is masked by only labelling nonwhites and women. The inclusion of some new information on existing historical markers, and some new markers, is proposed to educate the public about more of the important historical achievements of minorities and women. Materially inscribing the landscape with the important heritage of marginalized groups re-enfranchises them of their powerful pasts and identities that have been largely erased from mainstream history. Historical markers can educate the public about historic minorities and women who worked for social justice in the past, empowering marginalized groups who are working for social justice today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]