Emancipation Proclamation will go on permanent display at the National Archives – NBC4 Washington in 2026

The National Archives set a date for last year’s announcement that the Emancipation Proclamation would be put on permanent display.

Beginning in 2026, the historic document will find a home alongside the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence in the Rotunda of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C.

The new exhibit will add the proclamation to the list of “the nation’s foundational documents,” said United States Archivist Dr. Colleen Shogan in a press release about the exhibition.

“The Emancipation Proclamation represents a pivotal moment in American history that fundamentally transforms freedom in our nation,” and displaying the document will “expand access to the National Archives’ holdings and tell a more comprehensive story,” Shogan said in the release.

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, as the US entered the third year of the Civil War. The famous speech freed all enslaved people in states that had seceded from the Union and were not yet under Northern control, once the Union won the war.

During a celebration on June 1 last year, the National Archives announced that the permanent exhibit for the Emancipation Proclamation was coming, but did not provide a date.

In 2023 and 2024, the Archives displayed the document for a few days around the June bank holiday.

That temporary exhibition also included General Order No. 3 – the document that informed enslaved people in Galveston, Texas in 1865 that they had been freed two years earlier.

The upcoming permanent exhibit was paid for with a gift from Boeing to the National Archives Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the National Archives.

“Permanently displaying the Emancipation Proclamation among America’s founding documents is an important step forward in telling a more complete story about America’s past,” said Ted Colbert, president and CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, in the press release. “With this investment, Boeing hopes to encourage visitors to be more civically engaged and have robust conversations about what it means to build a truly just and inclusive society.”

Colbert became CEO of Boeing in 2022, and the company has made efforts in recent years to hire more non-white factory workers and pilots, sometimes with pushback.

With Boeing’s donation, the Archives can now create “a custom case” that will “appropriately protect and display the Emancipation Proclamation,” according to the press release.

“The enclosure will meet stringent conservation and safety requirements, and will be designed to blend seamlessly with the historic architecture of the Rotunda,” the release continued.

Also top-of-mind are efforts to preserve documents by rotating each of the five double-sided pages, limiting light exposure on each page of the document.

The 2024 temporary exhibition ends on Thursday, June 20.