“Roberson Museum and Science Center will host a special two-day exhibition to mark the 150thAnniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation Thursday, November 1 from 12-8pm and Friday, November 2 from 12-pm. The exhibition offers an unprecedented display of the only surviving version of the document in Lincoln’s handwriting and includes historical background and interpretation of the document. The First Step to Freedom will also include the manuscript of a speech written and delivered in New York City in September 1962 by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for the Proclamation’s centennial. Free Admissioncourtesy of generous sponsorship support from the Roger Kresge Foundation and an Anonymous Donor.
Lincoln’s handwritten Preliminary Proclamation, issued one hundred fifty years ago in the midst of the Civil War, is the only surviving copy of this document in Lincoln’s own handwriting. Lincoln donated it to the U.S. Sanitary Commission, which raffled the document at an Albany Army Relief Association Fair in 1864. It was later purchased by the New York State Legislature. Although Lincoln’s handwritten final Emancipation Proclamation burned in the Chicago fire in 1871, the Preliminary Proclamation survived the State Capitol fire of 1911 and has been preserved by the State Library.” –courtesy of the Roberson Museum