Defining Moments: African American Commemoration and Political Culture in the South, 1863-1913.

Defining Moments: African American Commemoration and Political Culture in the South, 1863-1913. By Kathleen Ann Clark. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c. 2005. Pp. x, 302. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8078-5622-3; cloth, $55.00, ISBN 0-8078-2957-9.)

The amalgamation of emancipation celebrations, African American political culture, and American intellectual history has never before been so fully or so intelligently explored as in Defining Moments: African American Commemoration and Political Culture in the South, 1863-1913. This book's central construction begins with the defining moment of emancipation for millions of African Americans across the South and continues into the twentieth century, examining the shifting concepts devoted to public self-representation and identity, citizenship, gender, black history, and politics. It focuses primarily on urban celebrations in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia but includes events in five other southern states and the District of Columbia. The study examines not only emancipation commemorations but also Independence Day celebrations, where the definition of American citizenship often became most pronounced. It discusses issues of class, disparities between urban and rural African Americans, and differing leadership offerings from politicians, ministers, educators, editorialists, and community entrepreneurs. It does not shy away from the conflicts created by generational differences, nor is it afraid to explore the central question regarding the promise of freedom and the reality of southern oppression. How were freed people and their descendants able to continue to display public gratitude for the profound event of emancipation while experiencing the life-altering dislocations evinced by rising racism?

Answers came in part through the oratorical labors of black leaders who with great intentionality demonstrated the genealogical connection between African Americans and their claim to the nation's origins. They emphasized the ideals of revolution--taking up arms for independence, defending rights, and practicing responsible democracy through political participation. By linking black freedom with the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation, orators bypassed Confederate memory and admonished former slaves to claim allegiance to a national legacy.

Preachers and missionaries imbued the celebrations with religious overtones; slavery was a sin, they intoned, but God's hand revealed a mighty sword that cut away the chains of bondage. To invoke God's presence complemented notions of national affiliation and underscored the sanctity of emancipation. That God had intervened in human lives reassured survivors of a future filled with progress. This image was easier to invoke during Reconstruction than in later years; the challenge to leaders came when the nation succumbed to reconciliation on white southern terms, leaving the ideal of racial equality in jeopardy. Adding to the problem, African emigrationists competed rhetorically with emancipation celebrants who meant to stay in the United States. The response to both these conflicting views was for black leaders to embrace a vision of historical race progress.

By 1913, at the fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, celebrants had difficulty "defining a coherent vision of the black past" (p. 201). Accommodationist tendencies crept into the rhetoric. Admonitions to befriend whites, work hard, tend to the family, appreciate education, and become best men and best women sounded more like platitudes than protests. After black militias were disbanded by legislative flat, fights broke out when marchers attempted to parade without a military presence. Fights developed into riots, such as the 1906 outrage in Atlanta, where at least twenty-five blacks were killed. By 1910 enforced marginalization moved many Emancipation Day celebrations from public to enclosed space. John Hope, president of Atlanta University, noted that his childhood celebrations had been grand, but by the early twentieth century, "that vast multitude of my boyhood years shriveled into a church. The orator.... said not emancipation, freedom, liberty" (quoted on p. 227). This story of declension, so often seen in the Jim Crow era, has an underlying positive message, however. Even if freedom day celebrations were marginalized, that they existed at all in the age of black repression allowed African Americans to celebrate a heroic version of the past, and it presented to future generations a way to keep pride and hope alive.

ELIZABETH HAYES TURNER

University of North Texas