The Gerrit Smith Estate and National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum will host its 16th Annual Emancipation Day on Saturday, August 1st at the Smithville Community Center in Peterboro, Madison County, NY, about 25 miles southeast of Syracuse.
Emancipation Day commemorates the abolition of enslavement in America by replicating historical Emancipation Days first celebrated in the 1920s. By the 1920s, the tradition of celebrating emancipation had shifted from the historic July dates to the first week of August (specifically August 1st).
This was done to commemorate a trio of freedoms: the 1827 end of slavery in New York, Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, and the August 1, 1834 abolition of slavery in the British Empire.
This year’s celebration blends commemoration with celebration, with opportunities to gather, presentations that honor the legacy of abolition and consider responses to present-day racism, and the traditional photograph, and ending with a procession to the Peterboro Cemetery. The Gerrit Smith Estate will be open throughout the event for self-guided tours.
The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum honors antislavery abolitionists, their work to end slavery, and the legacy of that struggle, and strives to complete the second and ongoing abolition – the moral conviction to end racism.
The Gerrit Smith Estate is a historic home museum nearby. Smith was a 19th-century social reformer, abolitionist, and presidential candidate. His spouse was fellow abolitionist Ann Carroll Fitzhugh. Their home was a station on the Underground Railroad.
The schedule of the event is as follows:
• Dawn – Dusk: Self-guided tours of Gerrit Smith Estate
• 11:30 am – 2:00 pm: Lunch available for purchase, Firehouse Food Truck of Oneida, NY
• 1:30 pm: Max Smith, Welcome and Overview of the Afternoon
• 1:45 pm: Nell Ziegler will present Smithfield Community Association and Gerrit Smith Estate Updates
• 2 – 3 pm: A presentation by Vanessa Johnson, a quilter, mixed media fiber artist, community educator, museum consultant, activist, writer, playwright, and actor. She is the Artist in Residence for the Matilda Joslyn Gage Center in Fayetteville, NY.
Johnson is a Griot, a storyteller in the West African Tradition. Her “Tells” preserve the stories of Africa and the African Diaspora with voices of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Abolitionism, Slavery, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, African American Women, and her own experience living in America.
• 3 – 3:30 pm: Break.
• 3:30 – 4:30 pm: Clemmie Harris of Utica University will present “Revisiting the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs, Justice and Freedom: A Brief Talk on the Need for a Third Reconstruction”
Professor Clemmie L. Harris earned his PhD in American History, Africana Studies, Metropolitan Studies, and Public Affairs from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. His talk: “Revisiting the 1963 March on Washington For Jobs, Justice, and Freedom: a Brief Talk on the Need for a Third Reconstruction” will explore the roots of systemic racism back to the foundation of the United States, and how citizens can take action.
• 4:30 – 4:45 pm: Group photo, followed by Procession to the Peterboro Cemetery to lay wreaths at Smith and the graves of formerly enslaved people.
Emancipation Day is a free event; donations are welcome.
Vanessa Johnson’s participation was made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts administered by CNYArts.
2027 Marks the 200th Anniversary of the End of Slavery in New York
Photo of participants of a past Emancipation Day provided by the National Abolition Hall of Fame.
When I was a young teen we lived in the small house behind the mansion . Our family made it into a home painted the walls cleaned the house that was full of garbage . I took my grandkids there one day and couldn’t believe it had the same paint that we painted and found out it was closed to the public at that time. It didn’t have running water but we had the creek no power but had extension cords that ran from the ole barn and we put in a wood stove for heat ! That was a fun and exciting time in our lives .