In 2005, the French government chose 10 May as the annual date for its national day for remembering the slave trade, slavery and their abolitions. The creation of this official day of remembrance fulfilled one of the criteria set out in the so-called Taubira law (2001), which sought to inscribe the slave trade, slavery and their abolitions into national memory. Since the 1983 decree under François Mitterrand, each of France's overseas departments and former slave colonies has had its own official commemorative date to celebrate abolition. But until 2005, France as a nation had neither a specific date nor any other lieu de mémoire to officially recall and commemorate this past, as if slavery was only a matter for the outre-mer. The stipulations made by the Taubira law dramatically changed this situation. Since 2006, prefects and city mayors have been asked to make sure that an official ceremony marks this date every year and everywhere in the country. Aside from national institutions, however, the event of 10 May – which tends to involve exhibitions, ceremonies, conferences and/or concerts – are organized in a minority of places around France. They mainly draw attention in cities where there is a large and active black community, such as Paris and its suburbs, where there is a higher concentration of African or Caribbean migrants, and where concerned civil society actors often help compose the commemorative programme and fill the audience. In addition to areas with high levels of ethnic diversity, slavery-related events are also commonly seen in those French port cities with a direct link to the transatlantic slave trade. However, even if cities, like Bordeaux or Nantes, have a relatively large black community, the slave past has not been a subject for collective remembrance until relatively recently.

Indeed, in these former slave-trade ports, the fear of collective stigmatization typically resulted in unanswered local memorialization claims until the turn of the century (Hourcade, 2014). By taking Nantes – once France's main slave-trade port – as a case in point, this chapter aims to analyse the ways in which the new legislative instruction to commemorate slavery has been answered in cities burdened with a particular responsibility.