Rites of August First: Emancipation Day in the Black Atlantic World

Forside
LSU Press, 2007 - 312 sider

Thirty years before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the antislavery movement won its first victory in the British Parliament. On August 1, 1834, the Abolition of Slavery Bill took effect, ending colonial slavery throughout the British Empire. Over the next three decades, "August First Day," also known as "West India Day" and "Emancipation Day," became the most important annual celebration of emancipation among people of African descent in the northern United States, the British Caribbean, Canada West, and the United Kingdom and played a critical role in popular mobilization against American slavery. In Rites of August First, J. R. Kerr-Ritchie provides the first detailed analysis of the origins, nature, and consequences of this important commemoration that helped to shape the age of Anglo-American emancipation.
Combining social, cultural, and political history, Kerr-Ritchie discusses the ideological and cultural representations of August First Day in print, oratory, and visual images. Spanning the Western hemisphere, Kerr-Ritchie's study successfully unravels the cultural politics of emancipation celebrations, analyzing the social practices informed by public ritual, symbol, and spectacle designed to elicit feelings of common identity among blacks in the Atlantic World. Rites of August First shows how and why the commemorative events changed between British emancipation and the freeing of slaves in the United States a generation later, while also examining the connections among local, regional, and international commemorations.
While shedding light on an important black institution that has been long ignored, Rites of August First also contributes to the broader study of emancipation and black Atlantic identity. Its transnational approach challenges local and national narratives that have largely shaped previous investigations of these questions. Kerr-Ritchie shows how culture and community were truly political at this important historical moment and, most broadly, how politics and culture converge and profoundly influence each other.

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Transnational Emancipation Day
1
CHAPTER 1 August First in the British West Indies
13
CHAPTER 2 West Indian Emancipation and the American Antislavery Picnic
49
CHAPTER 3 August First in AfroAmerica
82
CHAPTER 4 Black Loyalists in Canada West
118
CHAPTER 5 Fugitive Slaves in Canada West
144
Black Militias in the Atlantic World
164
CHAPTER 7 Emancipation in PanAfrican Perspective
193
EPILOGUE
239
BIBLIOGRAPHY
245
INDEX
265
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Side 236 - His reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history; which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
Side 20 - In the towns, during Christmas holidays, they have several tall robust fellows dressed up in grotesque habits, and a pair of ox-horns on their head, sprouting from the top of a horrid sort of vizor, or mask, which about the mouth is rendered very terrific with large boar-tusks.
Side 37 - I should not leave the negro town in whole skin. I had no right, he said to come into his yard; for he might do what he liked in his own place, and have what company he pleased. Because he had a black face and I a white one, made me do so. But when the first of August arrived, he would see who would meddle with him or his dance. He would be as good as me then, and would split my skull if I came into his yard that way again.
Side 222 - I say, when I view retrospectively, the renown of that once mighty people, the children of our great progenitor I am indeed cheered. Yea further, when I view that mighty son of Africa, HANNIBAL, one of the greatest generals of antiquity, who defeated and cut off so many thousands of the white Romans or murderers...
Side 165 - Let the slaves and free colored people be called into service and formed into a liberating army, to march into the South and raise the banner of Emancipation among the slaves.
Side 124 - ... neighboring authorities, and it certainly does seem to follow that a black man ought not to expect, because our laws grant him personal freedom, that he should moreover claim from them emancipation from trial for crimes for which even British-born subjects would be held responsible; yet on the other hand, it may be argued that a slave escaping from bondage on his master's horse is a vicious struggle between two parties of which the slave owner is not only the aggressor, but the blackest criminal...
Side 240 - Portuguese rulers. At the present moment she possesses nearly a million and a half of slaves on her vast plantations, many of whom lead a life worse than that of beasts of burden. (Hear, hear.) Now, having taken this glance at the condition of slavery today, I will add in the words of the Society that 'the chief object of this jubilee meeting is to rekindle the enthusiasm of England and to assist her to carry on this civilising touch of freedom until its beneficent light shall be shed over all the...
Side 236 - And what astonished me still more was, to see in this same humane paper! ! the cuts of three men, with clubs and budgets on their backs, and an advertisement offering a considerable sum of money for their apprehension and delivery. I declare, it is really so amusing to hear the Southerners and Westerners of this country talk about barbarity, that it is positively enough to make a man smile. The sufferings of the Helots among the Spartans, were somewhat severe, it is true, but to say that theirs were...
Side 21 - On public holidays," wrote the minister, each of the African tribes upon the different estates formed itself into a distinct party, composed of men, women, and children. Each party had its King or Queen, who was distinguished by a mask of the most hideous appearance, and attired from head to foot in gaudy harlequin-like apparel.
Side 235 - Neither did they come flying upon the wings of Liberty, to a land of freedom. But they came with broken hearts, from their beloved native land, and were doomed to unrequited toil and deep degradation. Nor did the evil of their bondage end at their emancipation by death. Succeeding generations inherited their chains, and millions have come from eternity into time, and have returned again to the world of spirits, cursed and ruined by American slavery.

Om forfatteren (2007)

J. R. Kerr-Ritchie is an associate professor of history at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and the author of Freedpeople in the Tobacco South: Virginia, 1860--1900.

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