Defining Moments: African American Commemoration and Political Culture in the South, 1863-1913 explores the efforts and insistence of African Americans to place emancipation and the end of slavery at the center of Civil War commemorative activities over the course of 50 years. More importantly, these activities demanded that whites recognize black rights won during the war and codified in post-war legislation.

Throughout the South, black communities observed Emancipation Day celebrations. Different communities celebrated at different times, sometimes based upon local events, sometimes marking national events related to the War, or making it a point to add their own narrative of American freedom to traditional American holidays:

January 1 – first day the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect (1863)

April 3 – fall of Richmond, Va. (1865)

late May – U.S. Memorial Day

June 19 – East Texas slaves finally learned they were free (1865)

July 4 – Independence Day

August 1 – West Indian Independence Day (generally observed in the North)

In addition to being a festive celebration, these events had a political message as well, especially after the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

For former slaves in the South, the simple act of participating in a parade or gathering at a church or even crowding into a public place that generally was considered for “whites only,” such as a town square – was a prominent act of legal, social, and psychological freedom. Just having the freedom of movement and assembly, and exercising free speech, reinforced their sense of liberty and their determination to safeguard their own destiny. It was a dramatic way to assert their freedom, and a visible, in-your-face reminder to vanquished Confederates that the old order had died.

Kathleen Ann Clark has done an extraordinary job of examining these celebrations in the post-war South, and ferrets out their deeper meanings. She looks at how African Americans viewed and promoted these celebrations, as well as how local whites responded – at times literally fleeing town to avoid seeing the sight of black agency. It is a fine work that goes beyond the celebrations themselves to investigate its larger meaning, for both blacks and whites.