This project explores how expressions of public memory that engage with Louis Armstrong reflect the “tensions and contestations” in the study of memory generally and consideration of his legacy specifically. Expressions of public memory as they relate to Armstrong, reflect a lack of understanding of the Black community’s struggle for freedom. Armstrong has been posited as a “racial figure.” In commemoration, he has been used as an exemplary model that signifies the dilution of racial identity only to binary conceptions of “Tomming” and militant activism. Where public memory has missed the mark in properly commemorating Armstrong’s legacy has been its reticence to engage with the dynamic nature of Armstrong’s life as reflective of the plurality of the Black community itself over the course of the 20th century.
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