As we draw closer to this year’s Juneteenth celebrations on June 19, marking the 156th anniversary of the end of slavery in the United States, an Illinois museum has announced that it will help to mark the occasion by putting a rare, signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation on display for the general public.
The Associated Press has reported that the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois will help the country celebrate Juneteenth this year by installing a public exhibit for the holiday, which will include a rare and priceless copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward in 1862. The Emancipation Proclamation is recognized as one of the single most important documents in our nation’s history and was responsible for freeing more than 3.5 million enslaved Black Americans.
The document itself reads: “That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.”
