California 175 - National Freedom Day - California State Capitol Park - Civil War Grove

California 175 - National Freedom Day, commemorates the long and difficult journey toward establishing the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

We must never forget the price for freedom during our U.S. Civil War where nearly a million Americans reportedly died in a collective total: Union and Confederate soldiers who died on the bloody battlefields along with countless civilian and formerly enslaved casualties from disease and starvation.

Our California Black Veterans Project seeks to research, preserve and memorialize United States Colored Troops from California who served during our US Civil War to preserve the Union and end chattel slavery throughout the United States of America.

On February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln signed a joint House and Senate resolution that would ultimately be ratified as the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution.

The 13th Amendment extended and expanded on the Emancipation Proclamation that Lincoln had issued in 1863, which only applied to enslaved people living in states under rebellion (it did not include enslaved people living in Union slave states such as Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky).

The Emancipation Proclamation was also issued via executive order and therefore subject to judicial review and the potential to be overturned if orders lack support by the Constitution.

The US Senate passed the amendment to abolish slavery on April 8, 1864 and the US House passed it on January 31 to be signed on February 1st by President Lincoln.

The 13th Amendment would became ratified after 2/3 of the State Legislature approved on December 6, 1865 and proclaimed on December 18, 1865.

Major Richard Robert Wright Sr., who was born into slavery in 1855, believed that there should be a holiday for celebrating freedom for all Americans.

Major Wright was highly accomplished within his own right as an educator, politician, and banker as well as a civil rights advocate.

In 1898, Major Wright was appointed to major and paymaster of the United States “Buffalo Soldiers” in the US Army by President William McKinley and was the highest ranking Black officer during the Spanish-American War.

Major Wright was the first president of the Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth (which is now Savannah State University, a historically black university in Savannah, GA) and also chartered the only Black-owned bank in the North, Philadelphia's Citizen and Southern Bank and Trust Company.

Major Wright also formed the National Freedom Day Association in order to achieve his dream of establishing a day to celebrate freedom for all people.

On February 1st, 1941, Major Wright invited national and local leaders to meet in Philadelphia to come up with a plan to the first of February a day to memorialize the signing of the 13th Amendment as the day to celebrate.

Major Wright unfortunately passed away in 1947, a year before his dream would become reality. On June 30, 1948, the bill to designate February 1 as National Freedom Day was signed into law by President Harry Truman.

Alongside Negro History Week, which was started by Virginian Carter G. Woodson in 1926, these were the forerunners to the designation of February as Black History Month.

While the 13th Amendment was a significant step forward in abolishing slavery, the amendment did make an exception for slavery "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," which paved the way for mass incarceration and the use of convict labor in prisons throughout the land.

California 175 - 2025 Black History Month explores the journey towards California becoming the 31st State, September 9, 1850 and our unique California Journey From Slavery to Freedom.

​​2025​ State of California Holiday Dates

Wednesday, January 1 New Year’s Day
Monday, January 20​ Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Saturday, February 1 Freedom Day (Optional)
Monday, February 17​ Presidents’ Day
Monday, March 31 Cesar Chavez Day (Observed)
Monday, May 26 Memorial Day
Friday, July 4 Independence Day
Thursday, June 19 Juneteenth (Optional)
Monday, September 1 Labor Day
Tuesday, November 11 Veterans Day**
Thursday, November 27 Thanksgiving Day
Friday, November 28 Day after Thanksgiving
Thurs​day, December 25 Christmas Day