Jessica Ingram still recalls the summer day a decade ago when
she stood at Court Square Fountain in Montgomery, Ala., taking
in the details spelled out in historical markers. There, near
the State Capitol, she read that the square was the site of the
city’s slave market. That none of the men, women or children had
been given last names. How much they fetched. The plaque, though
detailed, was cold. “I was kind of speechless,” said Ms. Ingram,
a photographer who grew up in Tennessee. “I was raised learning
about this history, but there was something about reading that
marker, and the confusion about how this site had been used
since that time. They had put in a fountain before, so there was
once a time when this was not considered sacred or having any
value.” That emotional encounter with the past sparked an idea.
Combining photography, oral history and even ephemera, Ms.
Ingram started “A Civil Rights Memorial,” an interactive project
that sets down the unnoticed or unwritten history of seemingly
ordinary plac