{"id":279109,"date":"2026-05-21T05:05:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T05:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/279109\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T05:05:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T05:05:09","slug":"tallahassee-celebrates-florida-emancipation-day-where-it-all-began","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/279109\/","title":{"rendered":"Tallahassee celebrates Florida Emancipation Day where it all began"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday, May 20 was observed as Emancipation Day in Florida. The ceremonial re-enactment of the original reading of President Lincoln&#8217;s historic proclamation took place in downtown Tallahassee, just as it did in 1865.<\/p>\n<p>Children from the Brownsville Preparatory Institute sang, as did well known local vocalist Christopher White.<\/p>\n<p>FAMU History Professor Larry Rivers gave a stemwinding keynote address:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re here today to remember the ancestors, the steppingstones. The ancestors who looked forward to freedom!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And the role of Union General Edward McCook was for the first time portrayed by Mark Rominger, the ailing Brian Bibeau having retired.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have hereto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed,&#8221; he said, concluding the missive from President Lincoln, issued 2 and-a-half years earlier.<\/p>\n<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"Image\" alt=\"Hundreds of people attended the Emancipation Day ceremony.\"  width=\"880\" height=\"495\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1779339909_765_.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>     Hundreds of people attended the Emancipation Day ceremony.<\/p>\n<p>This was all followed by a community picnic in Lewis Park, enjoyed by hundreds of people, including Mayor John Dailey.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To be able to come out as a community, join together and celebrate the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation and the reenactment is second to none.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This was Emancipation Day in Tallahassee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wednesday, May 20 was observed as Emancipation Day in Florida. The ceremonial re-enactment of the original reading of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-279109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}