The abolition of slavery in Brazil on May 1888 involved not only writers, politicians, journalists and the imperial family, but also workers, abolitionists and people who lived in distant neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro and other even farther places. The participation of these people was highlighted, for instance, by the popular money collection supported by a newspaper named O Paiz on the eve of the Abolition. The purpose of such collection was the purchase of a feather-shaped gold pen to be used by the Princess Regent on the occasion of the signing of the law. The money was offered by individual and collective donations in which the expectations about the end of slavery and the deepest senses of freedom associated to the Abolition were also present. The other celebrations promoted by the press are essential to understand the explanations it offered about those meanings.
abolition of slavery; press; celebration