NNPA NEWSWIRE — Proclamation 95, like the 13th Amendment that it 31 years later, favored the fundamental freedoms of enslaved workers in deference to the liberties slaveholders exercised for almost 300 years. W.E.B. DuBois once remarked that he saw the American Civil War as a “General Strike.” Throughout the bloodiest war in our history, an estimated 198,000 Black men traded their “pruning hooks” for military issued muskets. These men made up 10% of the Union Army, and another 19,000 served in the Navy. Although Labor Day was created in 1882 by unions, it didn’t gain national acceptance until some blood was shed.
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