Celebrating Juneteenth

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union Major General Gordon Granger along with more than 1800 federal troops rode intro Galveston, Texas, and told the slaves of their emancipation and that the Civil War had ended. That day came more than two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.

While the Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order declaring that “all persons held as slaves” would be free was signed in 1863 and General Robert E. Lee’s surrender in Appomattox, Virginia, marked the end of the Civil War in April 1865, news that the war was over, and slaves were now free spread slowly across the south and often met resistance from plantation owners.

The 13th Amendment, enshrining a ban on slavery into the Constitution, was ratified in December 1865. In pockets of the country, however, enslavement of African Americans continued for several years. The announcement in Galveston, Texas, confirmed the freedom of the last remaining slaves in the deep South.

June 19 is now a federal holiday know as Juneteenth National Independence Day having been signed into law by President Biden on June 17, 2021. The holiday commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.

The holiday received its name by combining June and 19. Despite being celebrated since 1865, Texas was the first state to make Juneteenth a state holiday in 1980.

The holiday has been celebrated for decades through family picnics, parades, religious services, and readings of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Juneteenth is the first federal holiday created by Congress since 1983 when the third Monday in January was designated as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.