Conclusion

The All Wars Memorial to Colored Soldiers and Sailors at Logan Square.

The issue of site is an important one in the highly political world of monument building, as seen with the controversy surrounding The All Wars Memorial to Colored Soldiers and Sailors.  In Visual Shock, Michael Kammen writes that during public sculpture controversies in the later twentieth century, defenders of controversial pieces claimed that, “they could not be moved because they were ‘site specific,’ that is, designed with a very particular place in view.  To change their venue would be tantamount to destroying them.”[1]  The All Wars Memorial took that theory and applied it in reverse.  The initial placement of the memorial in the 1930s effectually destroyed the value of the monument.  Liberating it from isolation breathed new life into the monument, allowing the stories of the brave African Americans who fought for the United States to be represented prominently.   For The All Wars Memorial to Colored Soldiers and Sailors a wrong has been righted and a controversy has been put to rest.