The New York State Museum, a division of the New York State Education Department, unveils a traveling exhibition to mark the sesquicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
The exhibition, entitled The First Step to Freedom: Abraham Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, will travel to eight cities across New York State this fall. 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 also includes 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.
Exhibition Education Packet (pdf 20MB)
Exhibition iBook for Apple iPadHarold Holzer speaks in the New York State Museum's Huxley Theater about "Lincoln and Liberty: Re-assessing the Preliminary Proclamation in the Age of Spielberg."
