My dissertation project investigates a series of recent and popular commemorations of the transatlantic slave trade that frame themselves as the first of their kind. These commemorations share a commonality as texts where discourses of race, inequality, and justice are written and rewritten. Alongside their commonalities, these sites are also quite different in terms of scope and function. This dissertation will pursue answers to a series of questions concerning public memory contestation. The primary question that guides my project is, how do commemorations of the transatlantic slave trade and its legacy in the United States function in this contemporary moment of heightened, even lethal, memory dissensus?