They are no grander, no more prominent, than any other site in town. In Pokémon Go, Lost-Cause Confederate memorials have been shrunk.
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All of these sites blend together, a series of indistinguishable icons on the digital horizon.Īnd yet, this virtual transmutation of scale also marks possibility. Bell decision, or the Rio Hill 1864 Skirmish (the site of a Confederate victory, now a shopping center), or, down McIntire Road, an inexplicable statue of a polar bear. There is a visual equivalence between, say, the apologetic plaque about the triumph of Virginia’s eugenicist sterilization law in the Buck v. Unlike in the physical world, almost all sites in Pokémon Go’s digital architecture are the same size and shape: light blue squares. Various historical sites in Charlottesville, Virginia, viewed in Pokémon Go.Īnd indeed, the appearance of the game itself plays a role in evaporating violent histories from the human landscape. In addition, because the game’s map pulls user-generated data from the majority white-and-affluent player base, there are far fewer Pokémon and in-game items on “the other side of the tracks.” Perhaps most memorably, DC’s Holocaust Museum was forced to request that visitors not treat sacred sites like a summer-camp scavenger hunt.
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When Pokémon Go became an overnight phenomenon in 2016, it immediately spawned a number of valid human geography critiques: wandering around strange neighborhoods is fun for whites but can be deadly if you’re black. I am ashamed to play Pokémon Go at an Unmarked Slave Graveyard, and I am also ashamed that without Pokémon Go, I may never have known that there is this small memorial in my neighborhood. Instead, the opposite: it is pro-Confederate historical markers and statues that rise up from the earth, towering over the landscape. This haphazard reconstruction did little to bury the horrors - rape, lynching, dehumanization, sterilization - beneath the soil. Now residential neighborhoods have been carved out of plantations, reshaping landscapes of pillage into chunks of twentieth-century ranch-houses as if from a blood-stained clay. South, white terror decimated that majority. The game text here reads, pulling from another historical marker, “Fate denied them victory but crowned them with glorious immortality.” Whatever immortality the enslaved people of Charlottesville may have, it is only because their descendants, those who still live in town, have willed it.Īt the time of General Lee’s surrender, Albemarle County, where the city of Charlottesville is located, was about 54 percent black - mostly enslaved people, some free. If I continue to walk closer into town, I can also play at “Civil War Confederate Dead Memorial,” which is unmistakably a cemetery. It is a public space that marks a group of people who were never permitted to constitute the public. “Unmarked Slave Graveyard” is not a cemetery it is the absence of one. A commemorative sign was added by the University in 1984, and reads “Graveyard Site: This area contains unmarked graves believed to be those of slaves owned by the Maury family, owners of Piedmont in the 19th Century.” ( University of Virginia) The game teaches me that “This area contains unmarked graves believed to be those of slaves of the Maury family, owners of Piedmont in the nineteenth century.” “Maury Cemetery” is currently owned by the University of Virginia.
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Just up the block from the pleasant street on which I live, the game directs me to a site called “Unmarked Slave Graveyard.” On my phone, I read the app’s descriptive text, which must come from a historical marker so small that I can’t locate it anywhere in the physical world. In Charlottesville, however, Pokémon Go reveals a landscape of racial devastation. All over the country, I’ve walked through rows of graves, immersed in my phone, searching out locations called “Praying Angel” or “Lady in Mourning.” The game populates its digital world using historical markers, so old headstones or memorials can become pilgrimage sites for Pokémon-seekers. In Pokémon Go, players use a smartphone app to track cartoon animals around physical space. I have brought with me my habit of playing Pokémon Go. I am a Virginian, but I have just moved to Charlottesville, Virginia after many years living in the North.