Beyond the Monuments in Washington, D.C.
Photographs and Text by Michael Jacobson-Hardy, introduction by Ralph Nader, essays by Michael Stoops and Lois E. Horton
“Washington, D.C. has been a city of contrasts and contradictions from its creation. It was born as the capital of a nation devoted to the principles of liberty and equality by an act of Congress in 1790. Yet, it was located in a region where the major workforce was slave labor, forced immigrants from Africa and their descendants, people deprived of their liberty, working without compensation, having no right to maintain their families, and subject to the whims of their owners.” — From “Historical Washington: A City of Contrasts and Contradictions,” the essay included in this Beyond the Monuments by Lois E. Horton
“Beyond the Monuments in Washington, D.C. is more than a book of striking photographs. It is a powerful commentary—in the tradition of Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange—on the failure of the wealthiest nation on earth to care for those of its people who did not hold winning lottery tickets in the market system. The images of homeless, the poor, the children of the poor, trouble us as they are juxtaposed with the Washington, D.C. we know—the cathedrals, the private schools, the comfortable offices of the politicians. This is “the other America” of which Michael Harrington once wrote, but still exists, and which these photos will etch indelibly in our memories.” — Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States
