Airs May 28 at 9:00 a.m.
This is a country awash in monuments. They are the centerpieces of traffic circles, street corners and, of course, the National Mall. We have erected them to Rosie the Riveter and Confederate generals. Yet our ambivalence towards these monuments is as old as our enthusiasm for them. In this Memorial Day episode of BackStory, we take on national remembrance. Looking at some of our country’s most iconic monuments, we ask what—and whom—Americans choose to remember. We discover that memorials often tell us more about their creators than what or whom they memorialize.