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In a quiet corner of a library at Mississippi State University, you’ll find a slim red volume that tells the story of what may be America’s first Juneteenth.
在密西西比州立大学图书馆的一个安静角落里，你会发现一本薄薄的红皮书，它讲述的故事可能是美国第一个六月节。
It took place in New Orleans in the summer of 1864 to celebrate the day of liberation for the enslaved people living in the 13 Louisiana parishes exempted from President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, issued the previous January.
这个节日发生在1864年夏季的新奥尔良，是为了庆祝居住在路易斯安那州13个教区的奴隶获得解放的日子，这些教区不包含在亚伯拉罕·林肯总统于前一年1月发布的《解放黑奴宣言》之中。
Newly freed New Orleanians gathered in mass public meetings—celebrations, parades, church services, and displays of Black arts and sciences—of the kind that had been banned under slavery.
刚刚获得自由的新奥尔良人聚集在一起，举行大规模的公众集会——庆祝活动、游行、教堂礼拜、以及展示黑人艺术和科学——这些都是在奴隶制下被禁止的。
Each gathering brought together the city’s Black community—the recently emancipated and those already free—to celebrate a future of citizenship, sacrifice, learning, and social advancement.
每一次集会都将这座城市的黑人社群聚集在一起——无论是刚刚获得解放的人，还是已经获得自由的人——共同庆祝未来将获得公民身份、做出的牺牲、学习和社会进步。
In doing so, they showed themselves and the wider world that they were a united community, ready to protect their families, demand economic justice, and claim their rightful place as citizens.
在这样做的过程中，他们向自己和更广泛的世界表明，他们是一个团结的社群，准备好保护他们的家庭、要求经济正义、要求获得他们作为公民的合法地位。
Accounts from New Orleans in the summer of 1864, in a city that was once the country’s largest slave market, confirm that the moment of liberation was America’s second Independence Day — and as in 1776, it marked the beginning of a fight, not the end.
新奥尔良曾经是美国最大奴隶市场的城市，来自1864年夏天新奥尔良的描述证实了解放的那一刻是美国的第二个独立日，而且和1776年一样，它标志着一场斗争的开始，而不是结束。
New Orleans’s celebrations were the first battle cry in African Americans’ struggle to achieve something more than freedom. At the end of the summer, 10 formerly enslaved men decided to publish a history of the summer’s events, the story found in the thin volume.
新奥尔良的庆祝活动是非洲裔美国人争取除自由以外的权利的第一声战斗口号。在那年夏末，10名曾经被奴役的人决定出版一本历史书，描述在那个夏天发生的事件，这个故事就收录在这本薄薄的书里。
Their pamphlet was a direct rebuke of state laws banning enslaved people from learning to read or write, much less voicing their demands in print.
他们的小册子直接谴责了禁止奴隶学习阅读或写作的州法律，这些法律更不允许奴隶在印刷物中表达他们的要求。
This specific volume—which demonstrated the authors’ educational accomplishments and their skills as printers and editors—was designed to inspire a man they considered an ally, though sometimes a reluctant one.
这本书展示了作者的教育成就和他们的印刷、编辑技能，旨在鼓舞他们认为是盟友的人，尽管这个人有时并不十分情愿。
We don’t know how many copies of Emancipation Celebration they printed in 1864; few exist today. But this one, expensively bound in red leather with silver edging, likely survived because, as the brass plate on its cover reveals, it was a gift to HIS EXCELLENCY A. LINCOLN from the FREE COLORED PEOPLE, NEW ORLEANS.
我们不知道他们在1864年印制了多少份《解放庆颂书》，现存的很少。但是这一本用带有银边的红色皮革精美装订的书幸存了下来，可能是因为如其封面上的黄铜牌所揭示的，这是新奥尔良的自由有色人种送给林肯阁下的礼物。
