| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 252 words from this article are provided below; about 546 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Mitch Kachun. Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808–1915. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 2003. Pp. xi, 339. $39.95.
In this book, Mitch Kachun writes: "The shift from a culture mired in slavery to one driven by the expanding promise and prospect of freedom is central to understanding the earliest freedom festivals" (p. 11). Activist black clergy, fraternalists, journalists, and other leaders "helped to construct the institutions and ideology that allowed black Americans to envision and work toward a legitimate identity" (italics mine; pp. 21–22). But that leadership's lack of knowledge of slave achievements, economic and artistic, greatly handicapped black people in their own eyes, a failing that goes unremarked in this book.	1
Kachun identifies freedom festivals—more private ones in churches and other venues, and large ones in public space—from the abolition of the slave trade in 1808 to the fiftieth anniversary of the end of U.S. slavery in 1915. His treatment of their meaning, of how black leaders interpreted the black past and present, however, is continually open to question. Although black opinion is not represented as a monolith, the argument of Martin Robinson Delany and William Wells Brown that African traditions survived the Atlantic slave trade does not enter the discussion. An epigraph to chapter one indicates, sadly, that Kachun believes, with Ralph Ellison, that Negro traditions "were 'mammy-made' right here at home." African cultural influence is greatly underestimated in this book.	. . .

There are about 546 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.