Texas was the first state to recognize Juneteenth as an official state holiday in 1979.
Juneteenth honors the end to slavery in the United States and is the longest-running African-American holiday in the United States.
Juneteenth is short for June Nineteenth — also known as Emancipation Day, Black Independence Day and Jubilee Day. It 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.
On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that as of January 1, 1863, all enslaved people in the states currently engaged in rebellion against the Union “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”
Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln didn’t actually free any of the approximately 4 million men, women and children held in slavery in the United States when he signed the formal Emancipation Proclamation the following January. The document applied only to enslaved people in the Confederacy, and not to those in the border states that remained loyal to the Union. It took until 1865 for the last enslaved people to be freed from the horrors of enslavement.
The remaining enslaved people not free by the Emancipation Proclamation were not liberated until the 13th amendment was ratified on Dec. 18, 1865.
Despite the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee to Union General Grant in April 1865, slavery had remained relatively unaffected in Texas. On June 19, 1865, federal troops, led by General Gordon Granger, arrived in Galveston, Texas, and he 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 free”, marking the official end of slavery for the state’s 250,000 enslaved people.
The year 2021 marks the 156th anniversary of the holiday. On June 17, 2021, Juneteenth officially became a federal holiday after approved by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden. The legislation creates the first new federally observed holiday in nearly four decades.
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