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What is Juneteenth?
Juneteenth honors the end to slavery in the United States and is considered the longest-running African American holiday. Juneteenth marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed. The troops’ arrival came a full two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Juneteenth and Slavery in Texas
In Texas, slavery had continued as the state experienced no large-scale fighting or significant presence of Union troops. Many enslavers from outside the Lone Star State had moved there, as they viewed it as a safe haven for slavery.
General Order Number 3
General Granger’s arrival in Galveston that June signaled freedom for Texas’s 250,000 enslaved people. General Order Number 3 reads as follows:
”The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.”
That December, slavery in America was formally abolished with the adoption of the 13th Amendment.
The First Celebrations
The year following 1865, freedmen in Texas organized the first of what became the annual celebration of “Jubilee Day” on June 19.
The freedmen and women would travel to Galveston, many dressed in their finest clothes — partly in response to the pre–1865 statewide laws that had prevented enslaved people from dressing in any clothing not given to them by those who held them in slavery.
Barriers & Triumph
Black men and women were often forbidden from celebrating on public land, many gatherings had to be disparately held in remote rural areas or small church grounds, leading some Black Texan communities to band together and buy land specifically for celebrating Juneteenth (and other community occasions).
The first such communally-bought land was Houston’s Emancipation Park, a ten-acre lot purchased in 1872 by the Colored People’s Festival and Emancipation Park Association led by the Baptist minister and formerly enslaved Jack Yates.
Where We are Today
Over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Juneteenth festivities became increasingly common outside of Texas — often brought to new places throughout the country by Black Americans who’d moved away from the state.
In the 1950s, the holiday temporarily faded in popularity. This was to some extent due to the Great Migration, when many Black Americans found themselves in northern cities, working for bosses who did not recognize Juneteenth. It was also to some extent due to the changing political attitudes of the mid–twentieth century, when celebration of difference was sometimes seen as antithetical to integration.
In 1979, Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth an official holiday; On June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed legislation into law making Juneteenth a federal holiday.