Observances commemorating the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, are being held throughout the country.

Numerous events are scheduled. Each will present the Emancipation Proclamation issued by Lincoln on Jan. 1, 1863. This document authorized the freeing of all black slaves in Florida and territories held by the Confederates. It also included a change in military policy, the enrollment of black males as soldiers.

Miami's first black attorney, Richard E.S. Toomey, was 3 years old when the final Emancipation was issued. Born in Baltimore, he graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and later obtained a law degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C.

As a result of the change in Lincoln's policy, black males were allowed to participate in the military. Toomey joined and was sent to Cuba to serve in the Spanish- American War of 1898. Toomey was commissioned as a first lieutenant during this conflict.

Years after the war, Miami's Colored Board of Trade invited Toomey to relocate. He opened an office in Colored Town, now Overtown, on Avenue G, now Northwest Second Avenue, a block southwest of the Lyric Theater and two blocks east of white downtown Miami. Toomey became the first black person to practice law in the city of Miami and southeast Florida.

In addition to law, he was a poet, orator and philosopher. From the time he began practicing law in 1913 until his death in 1948, Toomey led Colored Town's annual Emancipation Proclamation Jan. 1 celebration.

Toomey blazed the legal trail over which other pioneering black lawyers would travel. He is buried in the city of Miami cemetery. In 1997, Attorney H.T. Smith spearheaded the placing of a headstone marking Toomey's grave.

A decade later, Toomey was among those recognized by Chief Justice Peggy Quince of the Florida State Supreme Court in the book, Florida's First Black Lawyers (1869-1979).

Scheduled bicentennial events highlighting Lincoln's legacy are free and open to the public:

• A presentation of the book A. Lincoln by author Ronald White, will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, 101 W. Flagler St. Alberto Ibargüen, former publisher of The Miami Herald and now president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, will lead the discussion.

• A Lincoln Town Hall -- Lincoln, Miami and the American Dream, will be from 4 to 6 p.m. Nov. 1 at John S. and James L. Knight Concert Hall at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. There will be a speech by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.; a dialogue among nine prominent Miami-Dade citizens; music by Florida Memorial University and the New World School of the Arts students.

The words of Lincoln will be spoken by Alonzo Mourning, and there will be a reception at the Freedom Tower at Miami Dade College. Tickets are required through the Arsht box office 305-949-6722 or arshtcenter.org.

• Also, through Jan. 24, the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, 101 W. Flagler St. in Miami, continues the exhibit ``Black Freedom in Florida: 1700-1865.'' For more information, go to www.hnsf.org/lincoln.

Dorothy Jenkins Fields, PhD, is a historian and founder of the Black Archives, History and Research Foundation of South Florida Inc. Send feedback, questions or news to djf@bellsouth.net.