ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) – Dozens in the Rochester community are expected to attend the Inaugural Abolition Commemoration Day celebration on Saturday afternoon at Maplewood Park in the Rose Garden. The ceremony will mark a statewide milestone, focusing on the state’s 1827 Abolition Act, and it’ll celebrate the end of slavery in New York State.
“The celebration is intentionally set at the Maplewood Park Rose Garden, overlooking Kelsey’s Landing sacred ground that served as a critical gateway to freedom on the Underground Railroad where freedom seekers boarded boats to Canada,” organizers said. “The site represents the direct intersection of the local legacies of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman.”
The ceremony will start at 2 p.m. In addition to speeches by local leaders and historical guardians, organizers say the podium program will culminate in a Gorge Reflection Walk and Ancestral Honor. Attendees will have the opportunity to walk down the historic stairway into the river gorge area for a moment of silence at the water’s edge…