First Day of Black History Month: National Freedom Day

By Sereia Spinner

Today is not only the first day of Black History month but also National Freedom Day, which commemorates the signing of the 13th Amendment.

On this day in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln signed a joint House and Senate resolution that would ultimately be ratified as the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The 13th Amendment extended and expanded on the Emancipation Proclamation that Lincoln had issued in 1863, which only applied to enslaved people living in states under rebellion (it did not include enslaved people living in Union slave states such as Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky). The Emancipation Proclamation was also issued via executive order and therefore subject to judicial review and the potential to be overturned if orders lack support by the Constitution. The Senate passed the amendment to abolish slavery on April 8, 1864 and the House passed it on January 31 to be signed on February 1st by President Lincoln. The 13th Amendment would not become ratified until December 6, 1865 and proclaimed on December 18th.

Major Richard Robert Wright Sr., who was born into slavery in 1855, believed that there should be a holiday for celebrating freedom for all Americans. Major Wright was highly accomplished within his own right as an educator, politician, and banker as well as a civil rights advocate.

13th Amendment – Transcription: AMENDMENT XIII

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.

Black and white photograph of Major Robert Richard Wright, Sr. taken from the chest up.

In 1898, Major Wright was appointed to major and paymaster of the United States Volunteers in the US Army by President William McKinley and was the highest ranking Black officer during the Spanish-American War. Major Wright was the first president of the Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth (which is now Savannah State University, a historically black university in Savannah, GA) and also chartered the only Black-owned bank in the North, Philadelphia's Citizen and Southern Bank and Trust Company. Major Wright also formed the National Freedom Day Association in order to achieve his dream of establishing a day to celebrate freedom for all people.

On February 1st, 1941, Major Wright invited national and local leaders to meet in Philadelphia to come up with a plan to the first of February a day to memorialize the signing of the 13th Amendment as the day to celebrate. Major Wright unfortunately passed away in 1947, a year before his dream would become reality. On June 30, 1948, the bill to designate February 1 as National Freedom Day was signed into law by President Harry Truman. Alongside Black History Week, which was started by Virginian Carter G. Woodson in 1926, these were the forerunners to the designation of February as Black History Month.

While the 13th Amendment was a significant step forward in abolishing slavery, the amendment did make an exception for slavery "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," which paved the way for mass incarceration and the use of convict labor in prisons. In Virginia we see this with the passage of the Vagrancy Act of 1866, which was passed by the Virginia Assembly on January 15, 1866. The act was specifically written to take advantage of not only the exception listed in the 13th Amendment, but also the hundreds of thousands of newly-freed African-Americans who wandered in search of work and missing family members. The law forced into employment for a term of up to three months any persons who appeared to be homeless and unemployed and should said persons ran away and be recaptured, they would be forced to work for no compensation on a chain gang. It is unknown to the extent by which the law was enforced, it did remain on the books until 1904.

Pictured: Full body black and white photograph of two Black street sweepers both wearing balls and chains around their bodies.

Today on this National Freedom Day, we hope you will take some time to not only celebrate the significance of today and the freedoms we have, but to reflect on the freedoms that many in this country are still fighting to achieve.