Salt Lake City used to have a lot more parades than we do now, some spontaneous and others regularly scheduled to commemorate past events. Throughout the 1890s and into the early years of the 20th century, September 22nd was hailed as a day of thanksgiving and celebration, marked by a parade with pretty girls dressed in white and proud men marching boldly. It was “Emancipation Day,” the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 proclamation setting forth a timetable for freeing four million enslaved African-Americans.
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