![]() Learn more about August First Day in the book Rites of August First: Emancipation Day in the Black Atlantic World, and article “ Whatever Happened to August First?”, both by Howard University professor of history Jeffrey R. 1, 1838.Ĭontinue reading Professor Zoellner’s article at the Washington Post. “Let us pray that our brothers and sisters in other lands may be made free,” said the once-enslaved William Gibson in Falmouth, Jamaica, on Aug. …The holiday had its roots in Jamaica, where a five-week revolt led by a Black preacher named Sam Sharpe in 1831-1832 had forced the British Parliament to make a calculated decision that maintaining slavery overseas was simply too expensive. On 28 August 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act was given Royal Assent and came into force on the following 1 August 1834. The holiday marked the radical deed of a foreign country: Britain’s passage of the Slavery Abolition Act, which marked the start of freedom for 800,000 enslaved people in all its colonies on Aug. Indeed, in January 1846, Ahmad Pasha Bey (18371855) promulgated a decree to permanently abolish slavery, two years before the abolition of slavery in the. It was also widely celebrated across the nation with picnics, speeches, dancing, hymns and marches until the beginning of the Civil War. It represented a day more meaningful than the Fourth of July. Tom Zoellner, a professor of English at Chapman University and the author of Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire, explains,Īugust First Day was once the most important date on the calendar for African Americans during the 19th century. Black codes were restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War. Black people in the United States and white abolitionists observed August First Day widely up until the Civil War, and the tradition carried on - to a lesser extent - into the early 20th century. ![]() ![]() It outlawed slavery in Canada, which became a haven for refugees. While this did not free enslaved people in the United States, it was a source of inspiration and hope for abolitionists. On August 1, 1834, Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act, outlawing the owning, buying, and selling of humans as property throughout its colonies around the world. Poster for an event in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1849, to commemorate the end of slavery in the British West Indies.
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