Emancipation Day was first declared on August 1st, 1985 in Trinidad and Tobago. It was the first ever public holiday commemorating the abolishment of enslaved Africans and their descendants from their British colonizers. The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 furthered the goal of the Slave Trade Act 1807 which legally outlawed the owning of slaves in the British Empire. Similarly in the United States, the Emancipation Proclamation signed in by President and commander in chief of the Northern Army, Abraham Lincoln, was an executive order designed to end the use of slavery in the United States. Lincoln’s signing sparked the Reconstruction Era, the Era known mainly for its carnage against now freed, Black Americans. It is still historically, the most powerful political tool used by a governmental institution to grant equal human rights to African slaves, changing the legal status of 3.5 million inhabitants from slave to free. It was knowledge at the helm of freedom from the very beginning. Abolitionists began thinking about the end of slavery during the Age of Enlightenment. It was the Quakers, also formerly known as the Society of Friends, back in 1688 that launched the first recorded movement against the trans-Atlantic slave trade in Pennsylvania.
History is being removed throughout American educational institution built on the safety on White Americans and their descendants. The reality is, everyone knew owning humans were wrong, regardless of how much of the wrongdoing were recorded. As researchers, storytellers, and voters in the current American electorate, it is imperative on our generation to keep clear records of current events.
