Valued Lives in Violent Places: Black Urban Placemaking at a Civil Rights Memorial in New Orleans

This article explores the history, use, and significance of a civil rights memorial to Martin Luther King Jr, located in the Central City neighborhood of New Orleans. Situating this memorial as an important site for black urban placemaking, I focus on a religious vigil against urban violence that was held there in late 2008. Using historical and ethnographic data, I demonstrate how participants in the vigil claim and inhabit the memorial in order to raise awareness about the impact of violence, while simultaneously asserting the social value of black people and communities. I argue that this action unfolds with particular urgency in the post‐Katrina period, to counter the perceived devaluation, criminalization, and social exclusion of black people. Participants in the vigil thus rework spatial, social, and symbolic boundaries to shift relatedness and to ensure survival and social membership. The article goes beyond traditionally territorialized understandings of place and placemaking to demonstrate how the actions, interactions, and moral frameworks emerging at this particular place are part of a larger black geography and spatial imaginary, one with the capacity to transform the conceptualization and experience of urban space, place, and community.