Emancipation Proclamation Anniversary Observed

Communities in western Massachusetts Tuesday will mark the 150th anniversary of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.   WAMC”S Paul Tuthill reports.

   Community members and town officials in Amherst will gather on the town common at 2PM to read the Emancipation Proclamation.  Bells in churches and at  Amherst College and University of Massachusetts will toll for five minutes.  President Abraham Lincoln  issued the proclamation at 2pm on January 1st 1863.  It declared that all slaves in the confederate states that were in rebellion were “ forever free”  State Representative Benjamin Swan  of Springfield, a veteran of the civil rights campaign, will read the proclamation at an event in Springfield.