On April 3, 1905, a photographer from the
Detroit Publishing Co. captured hundreds of African Americans parading through
the streets of Richmond, Va. The photo made it onto a postcard. Years later, an
archivist for VCU Libraries spotted the postcard on an auction website. After a
little digging, it inspired "Timeline of Emancipation Day Celebrations," a new
online exhibit from James Branch Cabell Library's Special Collections and
Archives. The focus is on how African-Americans in Richmond have celebrated
their freedom over the last 150 years.
"The date, April 3, was on the
image, so...we had a look at the white and African- American newspapers at the
time to see what the coverage was for this parade," said Archives Coordinator
Ray Bonis. He found that the parade was part of an Emancipation Day celebration
held by Richmond's African-American community on the anniversary of the fall of
Richmond. The parades began on April 3, 1866, one year after the fall of
Richmond and just over three years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the
Emancipation Proclamation.
These celebrations also relate to
recent efforts by Richmond's Elegba Folklore Society to celebrate Juneteenth
National Freedom Day, which commemorates the day slaves in Texas learned they
were free. Bonis is working with the Folklore Society to include their coverage
of these celebrations in the exhibit as well.
Bonis discovered the story behind
the 1905 image almost 10 years ago, but work on the larger exhibit only began
last summer. The exhibit covers every documented emancipation celebration from
1865 to 2012 and was launched as part of VCU's "Year of Freedom" initiative,
and is the only exhibit of its kind to focus on a single city.
"This year is the year of
emancipation, and that's in some ways the most important event in American
history," said John Kneebone, the chair of the "Year of Freedom" committee.
"African-American Richmonders didn't have the resources, the power or the money
to take up public space, yet they too celebrated their history and tried to
keep alive the memory of emancipation." The photos and newspaper articles in Timeline
of Emancipation prove just that.
Danielle Tarullo, a recent art history
graduate and a research assistant in Special Collections and Archives, investigated
the history of these celebrations through VCU Libraries' collection of The
Richmond Planet, the city's major African-American newspaper, and digitized
newspapers from the Library of Congress.
"In the beginning it was very much
a parade through town," Tarullo said. "Sometimes the routes were given in the
newspapers, and a lot of times they would end at the governor's steps or on the
capitol steps - places that it was very important that they show they had the
right to go. ... But in the later Emancipation Day celebrations it became less
about walking through the city and more about gathering at one central
location."
Though the manner of the
celebrations changed over time, their continued existence was a testament to
their importance for the African American community, according to Lauranett
Lee, curator of African-American History at the Virginia Historical Society.
"Immediately after the war, it
really says something about the determination of people to have Emancipation
Day celebrations, because most of the white people did not want them to do
this," Lee said. "Even in the nadir between 1890 and 1920, when a great deal of
lynching occurred, they continued holding these parades and celebrations."
In fact, according to Tarullo, the
celebrations held strong until the 1950s and 1960s, at which point the African-American
community's focus shifted to civil rights and to honoring Martin Luther King Jr. after his
assassination.
But the exhibit shows more than the
importance of commemorating emancipation. Lee said photos like these represent
an important shift in the African-American community.
"[Before the Civil War] you did not
see photographs of black people in mass like this," Lee said. "This was
something that whites feared. So to have photographs of black people marching
says a great deal about how they want to be seen, and the fact that they could
gather and march in public as a people.
And for Bonis, the exhibit is a
reminder of history that is not so far in the past.
"That photo
is from 1905. That's just two or three generations away," he said. "So for a
lot of Richmonders, their great-grandparents participated in these marches. With
this website they can learn more about it, explore the topic itself, and tell
others about it."
To view the exhibit, visit http://www.library.vcu.edu/jbc/speccoll/vbha/freedom.html. The information was gathered from a variety of sources but mostly from newspaper accounts from Richmond newspapers. Chronicling America, the Library of Congress' online resource of digital versions of American newspapers, was instrumental in that research. Other sources included journal articles, monographs, and the microfilm versions of late 19th and 20th century newspapers. Additional items will be added to this site as new information is uncovered. Members of the community are invited to email Special Collections and Archives additions to the information as well as personal observations and questions. Visit this site for additional Resources on Slavery in Richmond