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Juneteenth
, also known as Emancipation Day , is a U.S. holiday observed on June 19. It commemorates the end of slavery .
Although President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, slavery wasn’t officially abolished until June 19, 1865, because the news didn’t reach enslaved African Americans until two years later, when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas and made the announcement.
When Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Texas, he declared that “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 rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.”
The Emancipation Proclamation declared that all enslaved African Americans living in Confederate states were free.
Before President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, eleven Confederate states seceded from the Union between 1860 and 1861 in a bid to perpetuate the institution of slavery . This, among other factors, sparked the Civil War.
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The announcement made by General Granger “was met with resistance from plantation owners and hesitation from newly freed African Americans unsure of their next move.”
It is said that between 1619 and 1865, around 8 million “African and their descendants were enslaved in the United States.” They were forced to work in farms and fields for most of the day and were often brutally beaten and whipped by plantation owners and women were often sexually abused .
The Confederate states were reluctant to end slavery because it would affect their economic interests since enslaved African Americans were essential for the agricultural sector.
On June 16, 1865, the African American community celebrated Juneteenth for the first time. They prayed, sang, and wore new clothes and now the holiday is also marked by speeches, educational events, and family gatherings.
Although it is not an official holiday in all states, it became a state holiday in Texas in 1980.
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