Black Mail Blog

Black History: Special Delivery

Welcome To The Black Mail Blog and Podcast! At Black Mail, we bring you, Black History: Special Delivery.

Our topic today is the 1962 Second Emancipation Proclamation.

In 1962 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders urged President Kennedy to issue a Second Emancipation Proclamation Order.  The first Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863, to free the enslaved.  This second proclamation was being prompted as a call to action for ending racial segregation. 

 King announced the idea in a New York City press conference in 1961.  At the press conference, King reminded the crowd of President Lincoln’s statement that the United States could not exist being “half-slave and half-free.”  Bringing the issue forward to the present-day, King asserted that the Kennedy administration should recognize that the nation cannot continue being half segregated. and half segregation free.