History of Juneteenth: and the Emancipation Proclamation

Juneteenth Stamp

HISTORY OF JUNETEENTH: and the Emancipation Proclamation

June Nineteenth, or Juneteenth, historically marked the celebration of the emancipation of African-American slaves in Texas in 1865. While the annual celebration started in Texas the following year in 1866, and became an official Texas state holiday there in 1980, this formerly obscure holiday is now observed across the United States and around the world.

In 2021, Congress and the President made Juneteenth the 12th official federal holiday. It is celebrated with church-centered celebrations, parades, fairs, backyard parties, games, contests, and cookouts.

Now it goes by many names and was previously celebrated on the third Saturday in June. It is also known as Emancipation Day or Liberation Day, Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Juneteenth National Independence Day, and Black Independence Day.

Britannica.com calls it a “holiday commemorating the end of slavery,” and the History Channel says it “commemorates an effective end of slavery in the United States.”

But was it? What is the origin of this holiday, which goes back to 1865?

Origin of Juneteenth

Originally, it began in Galveston, Texas, to mark the arrival on June 19 of US Army Major General Gordon Granger, along with 2,000 Union Army troops, who arrived two months after Robert E. Lee’s surrender to the Union Army in the American Civil War – despite continued fighting in Texas until May – to read General Order Number 3, which announced that “all slaves are free.” It read:

Major General Gordon Granger

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 personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

President Abraham Lincoln‘s Emancipation Proclamation was made effective more than two years earlier on January 1, 1863. But because Texas was under Confederate government control until the end of the Civil War and was the most remote of the slave states in revolt, Juneteenth was a day to remember. In addition, some slaves who had moved away from their former masters returned for the celebration.

Misconceptions About Juneteenth

Emancipation Proclamation

It is necessary to clear up some common and quite popular misunderstandings about what Juneteenth was and what it was not. To accomplish that, let’s look at the progression of the liberation of enslaved people over almost three years.

April 16, 1862:

The District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.) freed its slaves.

January 1, 1863

The Emancipation Proclamation, signed by Lincoln on September 22, 1862, but effective on January 1, 1863, almost two years into the Civil War, declared slaves free in only the 10 states of the Confederacy that were in open rebellion. This meant it changed only their federal legal status in those states, but did not affect their liberation.

November 1, 1864:

Maryland’s constitution, abolishing slavery, took effect.

During the Civil War

Slaves would need to escape to a free state or wait for the advancing Union armies to liberate them. Subsequently, 200,000 African Americans did become Union soldiers, most of them former slaves.

April 9, 1865

The victory of the Union Army over the Confederacy brought the Emancipation Proclamation into effect in those 10 Confederate states that were in revolt, a subset of the slave states. This rolled out unevenly.

It was at this point in history that Juneteenth was observed for Texas — and Texas alone.
This was not the first Confederate state to free its slaves, rather, it was the last of the rebelling slave states in the Confederacy to do so.

January 11 – April 1865

Slave States

However, other non-rebellious Southern slave states would subsequently need to pass their own laws particular to their state to effect liberation. In these states, slavery was still practiced.

These would include several of the slave-holding Southern states, which didn’t change their laws until:

• January 11, 1865: Missouri
• Early 1865: Tennessee and the counties that would become West Virginia
• April 1865: Thirteen parishes near New Orleans

Slaves in Kentucky and Delaware were not freed until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified.

December 18, 1865

However, it was not until the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, adopted on December 18, 1865, that all the slave-holding states abolished slavery and involuntary servitude.

Observance of Juneteenth

Juneteenth Freedom button

The celebration’s popularity waned during the early 20th century, as oral tradition came to be less emphasized and classroom teaching became more widely available. Additionally, the Civil Rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s saw the wearing of Juneteenth freedom buttons, especially after the Poor People’s March in Washington, D.C., in 1968.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had organized it, but Baptist minister and Civil Rights leader Ralph Abernathy led it following King’s assassination.

The first time Juneteenth became an official federal holiday nationwide was in 2021. 

Since the beginning of the two-and-a-half-century history of the United States, the federal government has created just 10 federal holidays. Juneteenth became No. 11. It is the first new holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was approved in 1983.

Juneteenth, 12th Federal Holiday

Let’s see how the holiday changes now that it has become a federal holiday.

Juneteenth Flag, 2007

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com