Emancipation Day

I had many wonderings about why tax day falls on the 17th of April this year.  I knew the 15th was on Sunday, but why not the 16th?  I heard one little blurb on the news about a local holiday in DC but that was about it.  So, I took to the Internet and found some things that I didn't know before.

April 16 is a local holiday in Washington, D.C. -- Emancipation Day -- which is the day in 1862 when President Abraham Lincoln signed a declaration freeing 3,100 slaves living in Washington. The president's action happened nearly nine months before Mr. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in ten Confederate States.
This year,  marks the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Compensated Emancipation Act.

President Lincoln was one of my childhood heroes.  I considered him the guy who made us all equal--the way God wanted it.

This is a holiday I think is worth celebrating and I wonder why we don't have some version of it nationally.  It seems more worthy to me than MLK day, but that's just my own humble opinion.  When we spend a whole month hearing about black history, I wonder why we never hear about or commemorate Emancipation Day.  The article I read online mentioned Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton being part of the festivities which wasn't surprising, but also Joel Olsteen.  Good for him.

I guess the problem with celebrating a "freedom day" is that is wasn't that way in the first place, but it would be good for children to know today that great men in history righted the wrongs they found in society and moved forward.  I wish we could do that today.