Juneteenth is the oldest emancipation festival in the United States

Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration in the United States|

On June 19, Union troops led by Major General Gordon Granger landed in Galveston, Texas with news that the war was over and the slaves were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation - which became official on January 1, 1863.

Later attempts to explain the two-and-a-half-year delay in receiving this important news have yielded several versions that have been offered over the years. The story is often told of a messenger who was murdered on his way to Texas with news of independence. Another is that news was deliberately withheld by slaveholders to maintain labor on the plantations. And yet another is that federal soldiers actually waited for slave owners to reap the benefits of one last cotton crop before they moved into Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. All of which, or none of these versions can be true. Of course, for some,

Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered two months earlier at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, but slavery in Texas was relatively unaffected—until U.S. General Gordon Granger stood on Texas soil and read General Order No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that, by a proclamation of the executive department of the United States, all slaves independent.”

Declaration of release

The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, established that all enslaved people in the Confederate States rebelling against the Union "shall be free from then, henceforth, and forever."

But in reality, the Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately free any enslaved people. The Proclamation applied only to places under Confederate control and not to border states or rebel territories already under Union control. However, many enslaved people fled behind Union lines as Northern troops advanced into the South.

Juneteenth and Slavery in Texas

In Texas, slavery continued because the state experienced no large-scale warfare or significant presence of Union troops. Many slaves from outside the Lone Star State moved there, seeing it as a safe haven from slavery.

After the war ended in the spring of 1865, General Granger's arrival in Galveston that June signaled freedom for Texas' 250,000 enslaved people. Although emancipation did not happen overnight for all—in some cases, slaveholders kept the information secret until harvest season—celebrations began among newly freed blacks, and Juneteenth was born. That December, slavery was officially abolished in America with the passage of the 13th Amendment.

The following year in 1865, freedmen in Texas held the first annual celebration of "Jubilee Day" on June 19. In the decades that followed, Juneteenth commemorated music, barbecues, prayer services, and other activities, and black people moved out. Texas spread the Juneteenth tradition to other parts of the country.

In 1979, Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth a public holiday; A few others have followed suit over the years. In June 2021, Congress passed a resolution establishing Juneteenth as a national holiday; President Biden signed into law on June 17, 2021.