What is Juneteenth?

I know it’s been a hot topic for the past couple of years, but there are still a few people out here that don’t know why June 19th, 1865 actually matters. Well, you don’t have to ask anyone or let that search engine tell on you… I got your back. Let’s look at what this all means to, not just Black people, the United States.

They shootin’!!!

In 1865, the block was HOT. And I typed that in all caps because it was just that serious. There was quite a bit of uproar after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. President Abraham Lincoln signed the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, which put an expiration date on slavery of January 1, 1863. Now, that sounds awesome for a minute, until you understand that only the slaves that were engaged in rebellion, meaning those who’d escaped the Confederate south into the Union north, were going to be “freed.” Why does this matter? Because that meant only the enslaved people in the confederacy were going to be free, but those in the southern states still considered themselves to be a part of the Union, and were not interested in that noise at all.

With that move, President Lincoln turned the Civil War into a fight to abolish slavery instead of a fight to preserve what was the Confederacy/Union (depends on who you ask and where they’re from). So the military began to march south toward the Confederate states to make them figure out what they were going to do. Texas, the Lonestar State, was out there chillin.’ Nothing had really been happening over there because the Union troops hadn’t really made their presence known. As a matter of fact, many enslavers moved to Texas because there was no such thing as “freed men” in Texas.

General Granger Pulled UP!

After some serious fights and throw downs in Texas once General Gordon Granger pulled up on the scene in Galveston, the Civil War fizzled out around the Spring of 1865. This technically ended slavery. However, in order to keep their ability to see a healthy harvest, many enslavers didn’t make this public information known to their enslaved people until AFTER the harvest season ended. The celebrations that were had once this information became open knowledge birthed what we now know as Juneteenth. In December of 1865, America made it all the way official with the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

Where are we now?

June 19th, 1866 was one of the first organized celebrations of “Jubilee Day,” put on by the freedmen in Texas. With Black people migrating to other parts of the country, they took the celebration with them and commemorated the event with family gatherings of all kinds including cookouts, church services, prayer calls, and public information events. Texas took hold of the reigns and was the first state to make June 19th an official holiday in 1979.

This year, President Joe Biden signed the Congressional Resolution into law on June 17th, making June 19th a national holiday.

Information derived from History.com.

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