U.S.V.I. Emancipation Day

Each year the United States of America and her territories celebrate Independence Day with fireworks, patriotic displays, barbecues, picnics and parties. Here in the U.S. Virgin Islands, we get to commemorate not one, but two historical acts of freedom back to back: Emancipation Day and Independence Day. Independence Day commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, in which the Second Continental Congress declared that the thirteen American colonies were now a new nation of their own, the United States of America, and no longer part of the British Empire.

Here in the US Virgin Islands, Emancipation Day is a public holiday celebrated on the third of July to commemorate the abolition of slavery in the Danish West Indies. Slavery on the Danish West Indian Islands was officially abolished on July 3, 1848, seventeen years before slavery would be abolished in the USA.