On the Fourth of July every year we celebrate American freedom. In 1776, not only did the Declaration of Independence proclaim our freedom from British rule, it asserted inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Of course, until the resolution of the Civil War, the bitter reality for most Black Americans was not life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but slavery.
The news that the Civil War was over did not reach Texas, the last frontier of American slavery, until June 19, 1865. On that date, known as Juneteenth, a Union Army general arrived in Galveston and announced that all who had been enslaved were now free. The Emancipation Proclamation had prevailed. With the recent commemoration and controversy surrounding the Juneteenth observance in Tulsa, Okla., many Americans probably learned that Juneteenth is also known as Emancipation Day or Freedom Day.
Closer to home, another date in American history was — and still is in some parts of the Midwest — celebrated as a day when African Americans saw freedom. Also called Emancipation Day, Sept. 22, 1862, is the date that President Lincoln issued what is called the Preliminary Emancipation. Lincoln declared that three months hence — on Jan. 1, 1863 — he would free the slaves in any state still in rebellion against the Union. For Black Americans the anticipation of freedom, after close to 250 years of slavery, was cause for rejoicing.
Commemorating that date was certainly a cause for rejoicing among Princeton’s African Americans in the latter part of the 19th century. For most years between 1879 and the early 1890s, the Princeton Black community held an elaborate Emancipation Day celebration on Sept. 22. It was organized by African Americans who had settled in Princeton and other parts of Bureau County at the close of the Civil War.
The Princeton observance of Emancipation Day was usually a day-long celebration, with 500 or more people participating. The day started with a procession down Main Street to the depot to greet African Americans from Aurora, Mendota and Kewanee arriving by train. The growing procession would then move onto the fairgrounds. There the assembled crowd would listen to a young Black woman from the Princeton community read the Emancipation Proclamation, followed by speeches from the organizing committee and guests from out of town. The program always involved both Black and white speakers. Food would be shared and the day would often end with an evening ball at Apollo Hall.
Emancipation Day celebrations in Princeton appear to have ended before the turn of the century. The African American organizers, some of whom had served in the 29th U.S. Colored Infantry in the Civil War, were getting on in age or had already died. Also by then the brief Reconstruction era — when there had been a glimmer of a new egalitarian biracial society — had been eclipsed by the Jim Crow era of racial segregation. A violent backlash against Black Americans was underway, including lynchings not only in the South but also in the Midwest.
By the 1920s, what has been called The Second Ku Klux Klan was thriving in our part of Illinois. The time when African Americans could proudly march down Princeton’s Main Street celebrating their freedom and recognition as citizens was a distant memory. In November of 1924, Klan contingents from Bureau, Henry and Stark counties paraded in full Klan regalia down Main Street. Thankfully, the Klan sputtered out of existence in our area after a couple of years.
It took the nonviolent Freedom Movement of the 1960s to demand and secure civil rights for Black Americans in the twentieth century. Now twenty years into the twenty-first century, a new multi-racial movement that emerged in response to police violence against African Americans seems intent on our society addressing systemic racism. Emancipation was only the country’s first step in a long journey toward true freedom for all Americans.
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Historically Speaking: Celebrating Freedom - Bureau County Republican
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