On the night of December 31, 1862, enslaved and free African
Americans gathered, many in secret, to ring in the new year and await news that the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect. Just a few months earlier, on September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the executive order that declared enslaved people in the rebelling Confederate States legally free. However, the decree would not take effect until the clock struck midnight at the start of the new year. The occasion, known as Watch Night or “Freedom's Eve,” marks when African Americans across the country watched and waited for the news of freedom. Today, Watch Night is an annual New Year’s Eve tradition that includes the memory of slavery and freedom, reflections faith, and celebration of community and strength.
On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation
Proclamation and the southern region Enslaved people were set free!
National Freedom Day is a US observing February 1 honoring
the signing by President Abraham Lincoln of a
joint House and Senate resolution that later was ratified as the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. President Lincoln signed the Amendment abolishing slavery on February 1, 1865, although, it was not ratified by the states until later. A wreath is placed on the Liberty Bell to commemorate Freedom!
The Liberty Bell wasn’t the first name of this icon. The bell was originally known as the State House Bell. In the late 1830s, it acquired the name of the Liberty Bell when it became a symbol of the anti-slavery movement, in fact, the abolitionists gave it the name "Liberty Bell," in reference to its inscription which read "Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof."
On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln, signed the Compensated Emancipation Act, which freed more than 3000 Enslaved people in the District of Columbia. However, slavery did not officially end in the rest of the United States until after the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 until 1865. Emancipation Day in Washington DC marks the anniversary of the signing of the Compensated Emancipation Act. On January
4, 2005, legislation was signed to make Emancipation Day an official public holiday in the District of Columbia. Elsewhere in the United States, the emancipation of slaves is celebrated in Florida (May 20), Puerto Rico (March 22) and Texas (June 19).
SIDENOTE: There are also similar events in many countries in the Caribbean, including Anguilla, Bahamas, Bermuda, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Many of these events occur during the first week of August as slavery was abolished in the British Empire on August 1, 1834.
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), emancipation came at different times in different parts of the Southern United States. Large celebrations of emancipation, often called Jubilees (recalling the biblical Jubilee, in which slaves were freed), took place on September 22, January 1, July 4, August 1, April 6, and November 1, among other dates. When emancipation finally came to Texas, on June 19, 1865, as the southern rebellion collapsed, celebration was widespread.]While that date did not actually mark the unequivocal end of slavery, even in Texas, and emancipation has been celebrated on other dates, June 19 came to be a day of shared commemoration across the United States – created, preserved, and spread by ordinary African Americans – of slavery's wartime demise.
SIDENOTE: The 13th Amedment was never ratified until 2013.
