Related events:
- December 5 – The Fire of Freedom – 6 p.m.
- Elizabeth Price Kenan Theater, Joan H. Gillings Center for Dramatic Art, on the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill campus.
- Registration link
- December 6 – Beyond the 13th Amendment: Reclaiming the Promise of Freedom
- Carrboro Century Center, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
- December 6 – Martha S. Jones Presents The Trouble of Color, with Sally Greene
- 6:00PM – Flyleaf Books, 752 MLK Jr. Blvd.
- Link for more details and registration
- December 10 – A screening of Ava DuVernay’s award-winning documentary “13th”
- Seymour Center, Chapel Hill, on at 5:00 p.m.
Who doesn’t know June 19? Juneteenth, a date marked by joy and irony, has achieved the status of national holiday: the date on which, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, those enslaved in Texas learned of their freedom. Parades and festivals, picnics and Big Red soda set the pattern for these celebrations.
Who knows the significance of December 6? On that date in 1865, the 13th Amendment was ratified. It took 27 states to meet the threshold (North Carolina was next to last to ratify), but finally, and with the warrant of the Constitution, slavery was abolished. This anniversary merits a different kind of commemoration.
Juneteenth celebrations, important as they are, “cannot bear the weight of 246 years of unimaginable cruelty,” writes Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals judge James A. Wynn. “That’s because freedom cannot be cheered without grieving the profound suffering that made such freedom necessary.” Abolition Day is a time “for accountability, for grappling with a history that still reverberates in the lives of millions.”
The Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition is honoring the 13th Amendment’s 160th anniversary with a series of events on Dec. 5-6 and 10. These events will underscore the courageous work Black Americans undertook to bring about the end of legal slavery, as well as the work left to be done in realizing the full scope of emancipation’s potential.
The first event will focus on North Carolina’s own resistance fighter Abraham Galloway. One of the most significant Black leaders during and after the Civil War, Galloway risked his life behind enemy lines, fighting with Union forces, later becoming the first Black man elected to the General Assembly.
On December 5, Mike Wiley will perform “The Fire of Freedom,” a one-man rendition of Galloway’s life adapted by Howard Craft from David Cecelski’s book of the same title. The performance will begin at 6 p.m. in the Elizabeth Price Kenan Theater, Joan H. Gillings Center for Dramatic Art, on the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill campus.
Scheduled for Saturday the 6th is a symposium, “Beyond the 13th Amendment: Reclaiming the Promise of Freedom.” It will take place in the Carrboro Century Center, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
Note: The Carrboro-Chapel Hill Community Holiday Parade also begins in Carrboro at 10 on December 6, so plan accordingly; parking is available in the Drakeford Library Complex and other nearby public lots.
A keynote conversation between Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls and Martha Jones, distinguished professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, will open the symposium.
Earls previously served as the executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice and as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Jones has written books on the voting rights of Black women, debates about women’s rights among Black Americans in the early United States and the development of birthright citizenship.
Two panel discussions will follow. The first will feature UNC-Chapel Hill history professor Antwain Hunter, retired UNC-Chapel Hill and Durham Tech history professor Reginald Hildebrand, North Carolina Central University law professor Irving Joyner and Michael Williams, a descendant of people enslaved by Paul Cameron on the Stagville plantation in Durham County.
The second will feature historian Timothy Tyson, Duke professor of political science Candis Watts Smith, retired NCCU history professor Freddie Parker and UNC-Chapel Hill law professor Michael Gerhardt.
Jones will appear that evening at Flyleaf Books, 6 p.m., to read from The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir, one of Time magazine’s 100 must-read books of 2025. It will be my honor to be in conversation with her.
The final offering will look further “beyond the 13th Amendment” to wrestle with the reality that while legal slavery ended in 1865, its imprint shapes the machinery of the prison-industrial complex. From the time of the chain gangs to the present, Black men have disproportionately borne the weight of the criminal justice system. Ava DuVernay’s award-winning documentary “13th” will be shown at the Seymour Center, Chapel Hill, on Dec. 10 at 5 p.m., followed by audience conversation.
The Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition, an affiliate of the Equal Justice Initiative, honors local victims of racial terror lynching while educating the community on the continued impact of historical discrimination and violence.
“Understanding this history and reflecting on the meaning of Abolition Day should inspire us to continue the work,” said James E. Williams Jr., co-founder of the Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition and chair of the program committee. “We are engaged in a 160-year-long struggle to achieve that true equality and justice that real freedom entails. As Ella Baker said, ‘we who believe in freedom cannot rest.’ Much work remains.”
All events free and open to the public; registration required for “The Fire of Freedom.” Co-sponsored by the Paul Green Foundation, UNC-Chapel Hill Department of Dramatic Art, the Orange County Office of Civil Rights and Civic Life, Carolina Public Humanities, the Town of Carrboro and the Chapel Hill Community History project of the Chapel Hill Public Library.