"Tappahannock
Carole Harper remembers the excitement that enveloped the town of Tappahannock every year on April 3. That was Emancipation Day.
"You saw people and you heard bands and you heard singing. It was a good day," Harper remarked.
She was a little girl when her father, who was a local NAACP president, and her mother helped organize the day’s events.
Emancipation Day marked the day in 1865 at the end of the Civil War when Union troops marched into Richmond and captured the capital of the Confederacy. African American soldiers were among the first to enter the city.
Tappahannock began celebrating that day in the 1870s until the early 1950s with a parade, speeches, singing, dancing and lots of food.
Harper read from the book, Uprooted and Transplanted: From Africa to America written by her cousin and town historian, Lillian McGuire. 
"They came in early years by horse-drawn buggies, wagons or by foot. Then, as the years passed, they came by buses," the book reads.

The celebrations stood the test of time, weathering the rise of Jim Crow and the Great Depression. They were never deterred, even by the 30-foot high granite stone addition to the town square erected in 1909 that loomed over the fanfare.
"Every time we pass this, whether we know it or not, subconsciously, it's there telling us or reminding us what some people, not all, feel in the county about slavery and black people in particular," Harper said.
"I feel like the monument is a symbol of hatred and White supremacy," said Ronnie Sidney II, the organizer of the movement to have the statue removed.
When the statue was dedicated, Mississippi's governor at the time, Edmond Noel, whose father was a Virginia native, was the featured speaker. Noel's relatives' names are inscribed on the monument's base. Noel was known for authoring Mississippi's primary election law that created what was known as "white primaries," effectively excluding black citizens from political party membership and participation in primaries. Other southern states imitated the law.
 
Those connections to racial discrimination are what bothers Sidney as he glares at the names on the monuments and thinks about the inscription that isn't there, the name of this great-great-great-grandfather, Lewis Corbin. 
"He escaped slavery. He went down to Hampton, Virginia and joined the Union Navy and came back and fought," Sidney explained.
Records show Corbin served on the Navy ship, the USS Ella, which was a patrol vessel. 
"It really just energized me to remove this monument because his name is not on there. It's really just the name of people who fought for the Confederacy," Sidney said.
Sidney has organized marches, rallies and sent emails to the Essex County Board of Supervisors.
For now, the monument still stands."