America's Public Holidays, 1865-1920.

By Ellen M. Litwicki. (Washington, D.C., and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, c. 2000. Pp. x, 293. $39.95, ISBN 1-56098-863-0.)

In this thoughtful book, Ellen M. Litwicki examines how middle-class representatives of various constituencies used public holidays to inscribe their competing visions of America into the nation's collective consciousness during the "frenzy of holiday creativity" (p. 1) that pervaded the United States between the Civil War and World War I.

In six chapters Litwicki sketches the contested terrain on which holiday promoters operated. Federal and Confederate Memorial Days offered conflicting interpretations of the Civil War. Blacks, increasingly excluded from national rituals, agitated for their rights while celebrating Emancipation, an event most white Americans refused to honor. Radical and pragmatic unionists vied for workers', and the government's, sanction for competing labor holidays. And various immigrant communities used public celebrations to construct distinctive ethnic American identities while educating American-born generations in the heritage of their homelands. By the 1890s black, labor, and ethnic holidays evinced what many white elites saw as a dangerous fragmentation of American society. Civic leaders tried to institutionalize a unifying national vision through public school campaigns to honor Washington, Lincoln, the flag, and other patriotic symbols. Progressive reformers sponsored holidays like Arbor Day, Bird Day, and a "safe and sane" July Fourth (p. 207) to develop citizenship, build community, and foster pluralist Americanism.

Attempts to unify, however, were frustrated, as race, class, and ethnicity magnified the fragmentation of American holiday celebrations. Interestingly, these diverse holiday organizers all faced similar and increasing difficulties in attracting enthusiasm for their respective projects. Intragroup class and ideological divisions inhibited participation among the masses, especially when organizers urged prescriptive messages of civic education and social control. By the early twentieth century, educational orations, industrial displays, and even parades generated more indifference than enthusiasm, competing unsuccessfully with vaudeville, movies, baseball, and other enticements of commercial popular culture.

Litwicki succeeds in illustrating both the distinctive features and agendas of the various holidays, and the shared practices, functions, and problems that define them as variations on an American celebratory theme. The project's parameters help identify broad patterns and contrasts, but they also impose limitations on sources and problematize conclusions. Litwicki draws much of her evidence from a few cities, most notably Chicago and Richmond. While Richmond blacks had a vibrant Emancipation Day tradition, one city's experience cannot fully reflect the complex patterns in African Americans' engagements with Emancipation commemorations across the nation. And while Chicago is particularly appropriate for studying labor and ethnic holidays, one wonders how studies of other communities might complicate Litwicki's analysis. These are not so much faults as areas in which the book raises questions for other scholars to engage. This work is valuable and deserves attention in part because it will stimulate further debate regarding the practice and function of holidays and commemorations in the American public sphere.

MITCH KACHUN
Western Michigan University