What Is Juneteenth? Celebrating The End Of Slavery

The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the 13th Amendment nearly three years later represented monumental steps toward the fulfillment of the United States' founding principle that "all men are created equal," as they formed the legal basis for the abolition of slavery.

Many Americans are familiar with both the order signed by President Abraham Lincoln and the amendment it inspired. But recent efforts have brought more attention to the celebration of Juneteenth, which marks the practical end of slavery in the United States.

In fact, Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration of the end of slavery in the United States. President Joe Biden signed legislation in 2021 declaring Juneteenth a federal holiday.

Juneteenth also goes by several other names, including Jubilee Day, Freedom Day, Emancipation Day and Black Independence Day.

What Is Juneteenth?

The name Juneteenth is derived from a shortened version of June 19, commemorating the date on which federal troops freed the last of the enslaved people in the United States.

Even though the Emancipation Proclamation declared that all enslaved people in the Confederate States of America were freed as of Jan. 1, 1863, Southern owners didn't follow the order while the Civil War was being fought. The enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation depended primarily on the Union Army's advance and control of the Confederacy.

As a result, enslaved people in Texas — then the westernmost state in the country — weren't freed until more than two months after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender in April 1865 at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. By this time, Texas had an estimated population of enslaved people around 250,000, as many owners had moved west during the Civil War.

Around 2,000 federal troops led by Major Gen. Gordon Granger marched into Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, and read General Order No. 3, which announced that enslaved people in Texas were now freed "in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States." Texas was the last state of the Confederacy to have people in slavery.

The order dissolved the slave-master relationship, replacing it with that of "employer and hired labor," and it encouraged formerly enslaved people to continue to reside where they were living and work for wages. Freedmen were told they were "not allowed to collect at military posts" and would not be "supported in idleness."

General Order No. 3 was not strictly followed immediately, as many owners delayed notifying or freeing the people they enslaved until after that year's harvest, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The language of General Order No. 3, as well as owners' final reluctance to free the people they enslaved, proved to foreshadow African Americans' struggle for civil rights following the end of Reconstruction.

Despite Obstacles, Juneteenth Endures

On June 19, 1866, formerly enslaved people in Texas organized the first Jubilee Day to celebrate their freedom.

In its early years, Jubilee Day featured community-centric events such as parades, cookouts, prayer gatherings, historical and cultural readings, and musical performances, and were largely organized by local churches. The celebrations spread as African Americans moved from Texas to other parts of the country, taking their traditions with them.

The spread of Juneteenth observances slowed during the period of Jim Crow laws, when African Americans had many rights stripped away and experienced terror and violence at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. Still, Juneteenth celebrations endured as "occasions for gathering lost family members, measuring progress against freedom and inculcating rising generations with the values of self-improvement and racial uplift," historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the Hutchins Center for African American Research at Harvard University, wrote for The Root.

Despite pushback from white people in the use of public spaces for Juneteenth celebrations, Black people found other places — including near rivers and lakes — to hold events, according to Gates. Some African Americans were able to eventually buy their own celebration sites, including Emancipation Park in Houston.

Following the civil rights movement and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., renewed energy surrounding Juneteenth caused a push for more mainstream recognition through the 1970s.

Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth a state holiday, in 1980, and 48 other states and the District of Columbia followed suit over the next several decades. Biden signed legislation making it a national holiday on June 17, 2021, the first holiday to be added to the list of federal holidays since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983.

Today, Juneteenth celebrations occur in cities across the country, and the holiday has gained even more recognition since the summer 2020 protests for racial justice in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

The establishment of Juneteenth as a federal holiday is cause for celebration, Vice President Kamala Harris said at the signing of the bill, noting that "we have come far, and we have far to go."

"This day doesn’t just celebrate the past," Biden said. "It calls for action today.”