Juneteenth
Juneteenth (a portmanteau of “June” and “nineteenth”),[1] also known as Freedom Day,[2] Jubilee Day[3] and Cel-Liberation Day,[4] is an American holiday celebrated on June 19. It memorializes June 19, 1865, when Union general Gordon Granger read orders in Galveston, Texas, that all previously enslaved people in Texas were free.[5] Although the Emancipation Proclamation had formally freed them almost two-and-a-half years earlier, and the American Civil War had ended with the defeat of the Confederate States in April, Texas was the most “remote” of the slave states, with a low presence of Union troops, so enforcement of the proclamation had been slow and inconsistent.
Next: June 19, 2020