What is Juneteenth? The history behind the holiday

Juneteenth is the annual celebration of the end of slavery in the United States, held on 19 June. Its name joins "June" and "nineteenth". On 19 June 1865, Union General Gordon Granger announced in Galveston, Texas, that all enslaved people there were free, about two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Black Texans marked the day every year after, and in 2021 it became a federal holiday.

In short

• Juneteenth remembers 19 June 1865, when General Order No. 3 told the people of Texas that "all slaves are free".
• The news was not simply slow: freedom in the South arrived only where the Union army arrived to enforce it, and Texas was the last place it reached.
• Slavery ended everywhere in the country later, when the 13th Amendment was ratified on 6 December 1865.

What happened on 19 June 1865?

The Civil War's main Confederate army surrendered at Appomattox, Virginia, on 9 April 1865, but fighting and Confederate government in the far west went on for weeks. Texas was the most remote of the Confederate states, and Union troops had never occupied most of it. On 18 June 1865, Granger arrived in Galveston with Union troops to take command of the District of Texas. The next day he issued General Order No. 3.

Its first sentences were the news: "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free." It went on to say this meant "an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves", and that the relationship between them was now that of employer and hired labor. Its last lines were colder. The freed people were "advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages" and told they would not be supported "in idleness". The original handwritten record is kept at the National Archives in Washington.

About 250,000 people were enslaved in Texas at the time, according to the Texas State Historical Association. Not all of them heard on 19 June. The news spread from plantation to plantation over the following months, and some enslavers held it back until after the harvest, or until soldiers came.

Why did freedom take so long to reach Texas?

The Emancipation Proclamation took effect on 1 January 1863. It declared free the enslaved people in the states then in rebellion, but the US government had no power on the ground in those states. Freedom in practice arrived with the Union army, place by place, as it advanced. The proclamation also didn't apply to the slave states that had stayed loyal to the Union, such as Kentucky and Delaware.

Texas was far from the main fighting, so the army reached it last. During the war, enslavers in other Southern states moved tens of thousands of enslaved people west into Texas precisely to keep them beyond the army's reach. The popular stories that a messenger was murdered on the way, or that the news was deliberately hidden for two years, are legends. The real reason is plainer: a proclamation was only as strong as the force behind it.

Did Juneteenth end slavery in the United States?

Not everywhere. When Granger spoke in Galveston, slavery was still legal in Kentucky and Delaware, because the proclamation had never covered them. Slavery ended across the whole country only with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which Congress passed on 31 January 1865 and the states ratified on 6 December 1865. It bans slavery and involuntary servitude "except as a punishment for crime".

So Juneteenth isn't the legal end of slavery. It marks the moment emancipation reached the last of the Confederate states, and it has stood since for the end of slavery as a whole. Citizenship and equal protection for the freed came later still, with the 14th Amendment in 1868.

Juneteenth on a timeline

Date	What happened
1 January 1863	The Emancipation Proclamation takes effect in Confederate-held states
31 January 1865	Congress passes the 13th Amendment
9 April 1865	Lee surrenders at Appomattox, Virginia
2 June 1865	The Confederate command in the west formally surrenders at Galveston
19 June 1865	Granger issues General Order No. 3 in Galveston
6 December 1865	The 13th Amendment is ratified, ending slavery nationwide
1872	Black Houstonians buy ten acres for their celebrations, later Emancipation Park
1980	Texas holds its first state-sponsored Juneteenth
17 June 2021	Juneteenth becomes a federal holiday

How has Juneteenth been celebrated?

Freed people in Texas began marking the day in 1866. The early gatherings were part celebration and part politics: there were prayers, readings of the proclamation, parades, barbecues and ball games, and also speeches teaching newly freed men about their right to vote. Because many towns and white landowners refused to let Black communities use public spaces, groups pooled money to buy land of their own. In Houston, a deed for ten acres was signed in 1872 for what became Emancipation Park, and Austin's association bought land in the early 1900s.

As Black Texans moved to California, the Midwest and elsewhere in the Great Migration, they took the day with them. Its observance waned in some places in the middle of the 20th century, then revived with the civil rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s. Texas made it an official state holiday in a law passed in 1979, sponsored by Representative Al Edwards, and held the first state celebration in 1980. Other states followed over the next four decades.

How did it become a federal holiday?

Activists had pushed for national recognition for decades. The best known is Opal Lee of Fort Worth, who in 2016, aged 89, began walking toward Washington to make the case, and whose online petition passed a million signatures in June 2020 and about 1.5 million later that year. The protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 brought the history of racial injustice into the national conversation and gave the campaign new force.

In June 2021, the Senate passed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act by unanimous consent, the House passed it 415 to 14, and President Joe Biden signed it on 17 June 2021, making it Public Law 117-17. It was the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created in 1983. When 19 June falls on a weekend, federal workers get the nearest weekday off.

Juneteenth is sometimes called America's second independence day, since July 4 celebrated a freedom that most Black Americans didn't yet have. Its roots lie in the story of what caused the Civil War, and it is one of the dates in the wider record that history keeps argued over and retold.

Check yourself

• Why did an order issued in June 1865 announce a freedom proclaimed in January 1863?
• What did the 13th Amendment do that the Emancipation Proclamation and General Order No. 3 couldn't?
• How did Juneteenth spread from Texas to the rest of the country?

Sources

• Juneteenth and General Order No. 3 — U.S. National Archives
• Juneteenth, in the Handbook of Texas — Texas State Historical Association
• The Emancipation Proclamation — U.S. National Archives
• 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery — U.S. National Archives
• Public Law 117-17, Juneteenth National Independence Day Act — U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2021