Juneteenth is celebrated on June 19, and is also known as Freedom Day and Emancipation Day and it commemorates the actual day of freedom for slaves in Texas in 1865, freedom which came two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

There is a common misconception among Americans that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves with a stroke of his pen. Yet the Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 1863, did no such thing — or, at least, it didn’t do a very good job of it. Two and half years later, on June 19, 1865, Union soldiers sailed into Galveston, Texas, announced the end of the Civil War, and read aloud a general order freeing the quarter-million slaves residing in the state. It’s likely that none of them had any idea that they had actually been freed more than two years before. It was truly a day of mass emancipation. It has become known as Juneteenth.

Source: A Brief History of Juneteenth

Image: Library of Congress – The Strobridge Lith. Co., Cincinnati.” Abraham Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation.” c.1888

It’s staggering and heartbreaking that it took so long for freedom. But it came nonetheless and Juneteenth is a day of celebration, and it became an official state holiday in Texas in 1980.  It is celebrated in one degree or another in many other U.S. states. To find out more about Juneteenth, see:

• Juneteenth Worldwide Celebration – History of Juneteenth
• Juneteenth (Wikipedia)
• National Juneteenth Observance Foundation
• History of the Junteenth Celebration
• NPR Juneteenth Slide Show

Celebrating Juneteenth