“Nothing is So Surely Written In the Good Book Than That ‘My People Shall Be Free’” by Kevin

We don’t choose our holidays as well as we should:

Americans love to celebrate. We commemorate historic events (Thanksgiving, Independence Day) and people (Presidents Day, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day). But few are aware of the significance of January 1, 2008: the 200th Anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the United States. We tend to remember the end of the institution of slavery as one result of the Civil War. African Americans have commemorated Juneteenth, a celebration of the day, on June 19, 1865, when slaves in Texas were finally told about the Emancipation Proclamation two and a half years after it was implemented. But America has all but ignored the date that marks the end of the slave trade.

This past year, Great Britain spent the equivalent of $40 million to remember their 200-year old abolition law from 1807. They educated students, invested in museums and commemorative services, and considered the legacy of slavery and the impact it still has today. They taught anew the heroic actions of historic figures like Wilberforce, Newton, Equiano, and Clarkson, who led England’s fight to end their evil commerce in human flesh.

Here in the United States we are doing precious little to mark the occasion of our equivalent historical watershed event. To my knowledge, the only official action toward commemorating the date, a bill to establish a commission to “ensure a suitable national observance of the bicentennial anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade” (H.R. 3432), was introduced in August 2007, passed in the House (October) and the Senate (December 19 ), but with all funding eliminated. It remains to be seen whether this remains an ineffectual symbolic gesture or if funding will be forthcoming in 2008, obviously after the January 1 anniversary. Beyond that, the only government-sponsored event planned, of which I’m aware, is a public symposium hosted by the National Archives on January 10.

The Civil War and the Abolition movement are the first great flowering of the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. For perhaps the first time in the nation’s history since the original, flawed Revolution, a mass movement arose that was dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. That movement lead directly to the Civil War, the outcome of which was the ending of slavery in this country. It is one of the greatest moments in American history; the nation as a whole took an enormous step down the path of justice and equality. It is one moment in time that we should, as a nation, be unreservedly proud of. Those moments in history are few and far between; each of them should be remembered and celebrated. The date of the Emancipation Proclamation, Juneteenth, the dates the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts took effect, and the anniversary of the end of the cross-Atlantic slave trade should be celebrated with the same fervor and grandeur as the Fourth of July. Any one of those events was as large a step towards the realization of the American ideal as the founding of the country.

But we don’t, and that matters more than most people think. It has been said that no one is born a fully paid up member of the human race, that we only become truly human through the constant Brownian motion that is human society. And a large part of that society are the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves. Holidays and history books are markers of what we want to believe about ourselves and what we choose to think of as important. They shape our national character and our national character shapes how we approach problems, opportunities, and the rest of the world. A country that celebrates, that revels in, the end of the slave trade, the end of slavery, and the end of Jim Crow is vastly different –and vastly better — than one that does not.