What is Juneteenth?

Juneteenth is a combination of "June" and "nineteenth," it commemorates the day the last slaves were freed in America!

By June 19, 1865, the Emancipation Proclamation was two years old, the 13th Amendment had been written, and the Confederate Army had surrendered. However, about 250,000 people remained enslaved in Texas until Union soldiers arrived in Galveston and ordered their freedom.

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, with an effective January 1, 1863. It declared all slaves to be freed in the Confederate States of America in rebellion and not in Union hands. But it excluded the five border states, the four slave states who remained in the Union (Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri) and those counties of Virginia soon to form the state of West Virginia.

At the time, Texas was more isolated geographically than other Southern states. Since the capture of New Orleans in 1862, slave owners in Mississippi, Louisiana, and other east-points moved to Texas to escape the Union Army's reach. Although most enslaved people lived in rural areas, over 1,000 resided in Galveston and Houston by 1860, with several hundred in other large towns. By 1865, an estimated 250,000 enslaved people were in Texas.

On June 19, The "General Order No. 3" was announced in Texas dictating the total emancipation of slaves:

"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 personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere."

Former slaves in Galveston rejoiced in the streets after the announcement, although many struggled to achieve real freedom in the face of white resistance in the years afterward. The following year, freedmen organized the first of what became the annual celebration of Juneteenth in Texas.

Today people celebrate Junteenth around the United States as a day when our people truly became free!