Walker's art is permeated by an excruciating awareness of the sneaky ways that the historical past can intrude on our most intimate moments. She said in an interview in 1998, "There are times when you're friends with somebody or you're having a relationship, and you're not thinking about race for a brief moment. Then suddenly the entire history of the whole United States of America or the American South or post-Reconstruction comes crashing down on you and you say to yourself, 'Hmm, this reminds me of something. I'm not sure what it is, but it's vaguely familiar.' "

This collage belongs to a series incorporating illustrations from Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (1866-68). Here, the ghost of Ulysses S. Grant, the Reconstruction president, hovers behind three figures clipped from a snapshot of an interracial birthday celebration. With biting wit, Walker amplifies the echo of post-emancipation paternalism in the white man's friendly embrace; meanwhile, the enfeebled black man appears to be picking Grant's pocket. "The past is never dead. It's not even past," wrote Faulkner in 1951. Half a century later, this famous line cuts to the heart of Walker's project with devastating precision.