| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808–1915. By Mitch Kachun. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003. xii, 339 pp. $39.95, ISBN 1-55849-407-3.)

In Festivals of Freedom, Mitch Kachun traces a distinctive era in the formation of African American institutions of memory and activism in his examination of the phenomenon of freedom festivals, which proliferated in the years 1808–1915. Beginning with the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and ending with the fiftieth anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the United States, African American freedom festivals both celebrated emancipation and consciously commemorated African American history. Kachun's rich source material, especially editorials in black newspapers and texts of Freedom Day speeches, enables him to provide readers with a thoughtful account of the complexity and importance of this formative era of African American historical consciousness.

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