On January 1, 1863 The Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War abolishing slavery in the Confederate states. January 1st is Freedom Day for us black people. New Year’s Day is “Emancipation/Freedom Day.” Interestingly, nine out of 10 people that I polled have no idea of the date that we became African Americans. Before that day, we were slaves, property, chattel, boys, wenches . . . and, yes, niggers! Our Emancipation is a historical fact and a sacred event. It was the dying hope and prayer of many a slave that one day their children and their children’s children would taste freedom.

Two years later (1865) the 13 th Amendment was ratified in congress. Slavery was abolished in the USA after more than 200 years. In fact, Emancipation was America’s first step toward becoming a true democracy. Our experience as a “free” people in this country began 145 years ago. That was the first emancipation.

The Second Emancipation, I believe, came 100 years later (1963) when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial at the Washington Monument—The March on Washington. It was about extending full citizenship rights to a people after 100 years of lynchings, Jim Crow segregation, and denial of the right to vote in the South. Two years later (1965), The Civil Rights Bill was passed in Congress. This was America’s second great step toward true democracy.

Our enormous contribution to the soul of this great nation is legendary. In music, from the work songs of the African slave to the Negro Spirituals, Jazz, Blues, Gospel, R&B and even Hip Hop—all original art forms—were created by African Americans. Black America’s impact on language, fashion, sports, art, theatre and religion has made America a cultural powerhouse on the world stage.

Today African-American creative genius and talent are the envy of the world. Think of these extraordinary achievements in the context of a forlorn people -persecuted, dejected, humiliated and denied the dignity of basic human rights for more than 100 years after the end of slavery. Our story of struggle and triumph is testimony to the resiliency of the human spirit.

The next and final emancipation may well be our toughest challenge.We must free ourselves from the vestiges of mental slavery—modern bondage to fashion, debt, self-doubt and self-hate. Progress is proportionate to the ability to accept our history and claim our future—think for ourselves and do for ourselves. After all, it is our God given right and patriotic duty to preserve, protect, promote and prosper the very best of our collective talents and gifts.

Ultimately, we are responsible for and accountable to the progress of our children and the integrity of our culture. In regard to the negative cultural trends that abound today, the solution is simple: replace the negative with the positive. The light of good will always outshine the shadow of evil. Truth overcomes error. We are the children of a mighty God and a people of divine destiny. The African-American people have a real and lasting claim on the American Dream. What freedom loving people of progress would obscure, ignore or forget their very day of liberation from bondage? What real meaning does Kwanzaa, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday or Black History Month have without the memory of the mother of all cultural celebrations—Emancipation Day/Freedom Day?

Our children must never forget that January 1, 1863 is the birthday of the African American community in the United States of America. Only we can deny ourselves this grand jubilee! The 1968 epic analysis and critique on African American culture and leadership, Crisis of the Negro Intellectual by Harold Cruse ended with these words: The farther the Negro gets from his historical antecedents in time, the more tenuous become his conceptualties, the emptier his social conception, ,the more superficial his visions. His one great hope is to know and understand his Afro-American history in the United States more profoundly. Failing that, and failing to create a new syntheses and a social theory of action, he will suffer the historical fate described by the philosopher who warned that “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”