🖤 What is Juneteenth? Celebrating Black Freedom & Culture

Juneteenth—short for June Nineteenth—is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, with federal troops and issued General Order No. 3, announcing that all enslaved people were free.

For the estimated 250,000 Black people still enslaved in Texas, this was the first time they were told of their freedom. While freedom had been the law since January 1, 1863, it wasn’t enforced in remote Confederate states like Texas until Union troops physically arrived.

But Juneteenth is more than a date.
It’s a spiritual and cultural milestone. It represents:

• Delayed justice, but not denied dignity.

• A collective awakening to freedom.

• The beginning of a new fight—for land, civil rights, and equity.

• The power of Black resilience, community, and culture.

Since its origin, Juneteenth has evolved from small family cookouts and church gatherings into nationwide celebrations filled with festivals, education, music, and activism. In 2021, it was officially recognized as a federal holiday, a testament to generations of Black voices demanding that America remember and respect this part of its history.

Juneteenth and Slavery in Texas
In Texas, slavery had continued as the state experienced no large-scale fighting or significant presence of Union troops. Many enslavers from outside the Lone Star State had moved there, as they viewed it as a safe haven for slavery.

After the war came to a close in the spring of 1865, General Granger’s arrival in Galveston that June signaled freedom for Texas’s 250,000 enslaved people. Although emancipation didn’t happen overnight for everyone—in some cases, enslavers withheld the information until after harvest season—celebrations broke out among newly freed Black people, and Juneteenth was born. That December, slavery in America was formally abolished with the adoption of the 13th Amendment.

The year following 1865, freedmen in Texas organized the first of what became the annual celebration of “Jubilee Day” on June 19. In the ensuing decades, Juneteenth commemorations featured music, barbecues, prayer services and other activities, and as Black people migrated from Texas to other parts of the country the Juneteenth tradition spread.