06/19/2025
Sharing That Knowledge…
Juneteenth (short for June Nineteenth) 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 honors the end of slavery in the United States and is considered the longest-running African American holiday. On June 17, 20/-, it officially became a federal holiday.
Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court Housr two months earlier in Virginia, but slavery had remained relatively unchanged in Texas - until U.S. General Gordon Granger stood on Texas soil and read General Orders No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are now free.”
The Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 2, 1864 had established that all enslaved people in the Confederate states in rebellion against the Union “shall be then, thencegorward, and forever free.”
So, there is the history!
