WORLD'S GREATEST FREEDOM SHOW

In 1967, the wildly popular Emancipation Day celebration in Windsor, Ontario, dubbed the World’s Greatest Freedom Show, was abruptly cancelled.

Re-imagined in 1933 as a multi-day celebration and eventually drawing over 300,000 visitors from the United States and Ontario, this massive annual event celebrated Black emancipation following the British Slavery Abolition Act (1834). The Freedom Show upheld the promise of progress in Human Civil Rights in Canada. However, just a month before the planned 1967 celebration, civil unrest broke out across the river in Detroit. Authorities, fearful of the spread of the rebellion into Canada, forced the show’s cancellation.

This abrupt cancellation and moment of change is the focus of this virtual exhibition. Titled The World’s Greatest Freedom Show, this exhibition examines the celebration itself and its message of optimism in 1966 despite mounting racial tensions in the world around it. The exhibition will explore Canadian and American social, cultural and political events and sensibilities that resulted in the twice cancellation of the Freedom Show in 1967 and 1968.