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(January 2012) posted on Thu Jan 05, 2012

Traditional and new-school signage and graphics commemorate the struggle.

By Steve Aust

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When my wife and I toured various Montessori schools to decide where to send our daughter, many touted the diversity of their student body. One teacher, who taught six-to-nine-year olds, commented, “When we were covering history lessons about the civil-rights movement, two boys in the class cried when faced with the idea that, not so long ago, they couldn’t have been friends simply because of the color of their skin.”

It’s comforting to think that the youngest among us view the venomous prejudice, which caused wide-spread riots and bloodshed just two generations ago, as incomprehensible. However, as the saying states, those who ignore the past are condemned to repeat it. Museums and various institutions and historical societies exist to remind younger generations of the atrocities that have occurred in the not-so-distant past, and could occur again if they’re downplayed or ignored.

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Signage and exhibit graphics play a key role in chronicling or capturing pivotal events in the struggle for all Americans to be regarded as equal citizens with equal rights. I connected with a company that specializes in historical markers – many of which denote key sites in the civil-rights movement – and the designers and fabricators that produced exhibit graphics for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI), which chronicles that city and the state of Alabama’s numerous, transformative events in the civil-rights era – which, hopefully, is a suitable tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy, and January’s holiday observance of his birthday.

Sewah Studios
In 1927, E.M. Hawes founded a Marietta, OH-based company that manufactures cast-aluminum memorial markers. He cleverly provided a distinctive name by inverting his last name and christening the company Sewah Studios. Today, Bradford Smith runs the company, but it still fabricates its monuments in virtually the same manner as they were made more than 80 years ago.

“There are a few states that operate competitive bids for memorial markers, but we have exclusive-source agreements in many places,” he said. “We specialize in this business, and our reputation has helped us become the leading provider in this niche market.”