Tracking "Terror" in US Memory

In the years that followed the events of September 11, 2001, the meanings of “terror” in the U.S. public sphere were inextricably linked with the specific violence of that day. Yet the idea of terrorism has a much longer history. Its meanings also continue to be contested and transformed in the present. Indeed, over the last several years, the meanings of “terror” in the United States have increasingly been untethered from the specific events of 9/11. In particular, new memorials and museums—such as the Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Greenwood Rising Black Wall Street History Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma—have breathed new life into a century-old discourse that characterizes historical racial violence as a form of terrorism. In doing so, they mobilize the moral and emotional resonance of post-9/11 terrorism discourse to reimagine how domestic histories of violence are portrayed in national narratives. This paper tracks the changing meanings of “terror” and “terrorism” in U.S. public discourse, focusing especially on the last 30 years: from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to the present. It pays particular attention to memorials and museums as sites where the meanings of “terror” and “terrorism” are established, contested, and transformed in ways that reach wide audiences.