The ongoing campaign to eradicate Confederate symbols marks an important moment in American public memory, perhaps allowing the scars of slavery and segregation to start healing. Yet while the actions of Bree Newsome and company have been truly inspiring, the collective feeling when the flags began to come down seemed mainly to be a sigh of relief.

One hundred fifty years earlier, in the first summer after the actual downfall of the Confederacy, African Americans across the land were more upbeat. Emancipation did not immediately bring full equality, but the war’s end was still cause for optimism. The shackles had come off in the South, while in the North, blacks no longer had to fear being sent back to slavery. It was time for celebration.

In New York, their previous efforts to do so had sparked controversy. Just a few weeks after Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender in April 1865, the New York Common Council had denied blacks the right to formally participate in President Lincoln’s funeral procession. At a Cooper Union event in early June, an indignant Frederick Douglass called the council’s action “the most disgraceful and scandalous proceeding ever exhibited by people calling themselves civilized.”