Freeing a whole class of humans

Today is the anniversay of the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring freedom for slaves.

It’s not mentioned in the news, but important to recall.

Although most slaves were not freed immediately, the Proclamation brought freedom to thousands of slaves the day it went into effect in parts of nine of the ten states to which it applied…Additionally, the Proclamation provided a legal framework for the emancipation of nearly all four million slaves as the Union armies advanced, and committed the Union to ending slavery…

As the Union armies conquered the Confederacy, thousands of slaves were freed each day until nearly all…were freed by July 1865.

This was the beginning of the end of that dreadful crime against human dignity.

Booker T. Washington, as a boy of 9 in Virginia, remembered the day in early 1865:

As the great day drew nearer, there was more singing in the slave quarters than usual. It was bolder, had more ring, and lasted later into the night. Most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to freedom…. Some man who seemed to be a stranger (a United States officer, I presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper—the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading we were told that we were all free, and could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would never live to see.

Imagine the day for the class of human beings currently deemed as unworthy of rights.