“Agonizing Groans of Mothers” and “Slave‐Scarred Veterans”: The Commemoration of Slavery and Emancipation

Abstract

This essay focuses on the impact of slavery on the lives of the formerly enslaved and their descendants in the black communities of the upper Midwest and explores contested memories of slavery and emancipation in three sites of cultural production: Emancipation Day celebrations, obituaries, and postbellum slave narratives. The essay finds that the formerly‐enslaved and their descendants grappled with a national legacy of slavery in memory and commemoration, in public memorials to private suffering, and by recalling, revisiting, and inscribed on community remembrance and national history the traumas of slavery.

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