Description
Vito Sgromo, curator of the Historic State Capitol Museum in Sacramento, called John William Templeton in 2007 to interpret a discovery found in a closet. It was a nine foot tall framed resolution of approval for the 13th Amendment.
In addition to the size, Templeton noticed that every member of the legislature had signed it, including those who voted against it, an indication of how important they thought it was.
Templeton would produce his second exhibition at the Capitol, Gold Rush Abolitionists, describing the little-known but highly significant role of California in the abolition movement and Civil War.
Then, he would seek out the same resolution from every state that ratified the Amendment, called by newspapers at the time the second American Revolution.
Road to Ratification traces that same journey in each of those states through the research of prominent Black authors of the 19th century, military records and Congressional and state legislature records.
Most do not understand that the 13th Amendment and not the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery because of what Dr. Carter G. Woodson called The Miseducation of the Negro, and everyone else as well.
Road to Ratification is the textbook for a 31 part series highlighting each state that ratified the Amendment on ReUNION: Education-Arts-Heritage, the Aftican chilren’s instructional channel.
