Interracial festivity and power in antebellum New York - The case of Pinkster

Of the various historiographical interpretations of Pinkster, least satisfactory is this characterization of the holiday as a carnival of inversion that posed no challenge to the power elite. Closer examination suggests the opposite was the case. Yet it is likewise misleading to represent Pinkster as an exclusively Afrocentric event. In fact, both readings stem from the same misapprehension. Contemporary discussions notwithstanding, Pinkster in Albany is inappropriately labeled an African American holiday. Rather, it was a multiracial, panethnic celebration. Drawing together disaffected members of several social classes, Pinkster fostered a democratic populism and spiritual exuberance that challenged the settled power of the Federalist merchants who lorded over the local economy and the state government. Reexamining the holiday in the context of the sweeping social and political changes effected by the market revolution suggests that the leaders of Albany sought to suppress Pinkster not because they thought it distasteful but because they realized it posed a threat to their political and economic interests. Far from being an ineffectual symbolic gesture that underscored the stability of the status quo, the carnival represented the specter of popular democracy and of African American emancipation.