✊🏾 Every June 19th (#Juneteenth) is an opportunity for us to continue the momentum of memory and commemorate the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States.

Declared a federal holiday on June 17, 2021 by President Biden, it gives Americans the opportunity to contemplate the complicated processes of emancipation that took place after President Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. Specifically, Juneteenth marks the day (June 19, 1865) when a Union Army general, Gordon Granger, arrived in Galveston, Texas and demanded that the state’s 250,000 plus enslaved people be set free.

To communicate this demand, Granger read aloud General Order No. 3:

"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."

In other words, enslaved people in Galveston, Texas did not know about Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation until this Union army general arrived two and a half years later and announced it to the public. A delayed awareness of the Emancipation Proclamation was the reality for many enslaved people in the South. It was not until the Union Army swept through the South in 1863 and 1864 that news of the Proclamation spread—and populations of enslaved people across the South were able to celebrate their freedom. Only the action of Congress to pass the 13th Amendment and the ratification by the necessary number of states on December 6, 1865, officially abolished slavery in every state, not just those in open rebellion.

Also known as #FreedomDay #EmancipationDay #BlackIndependenceDay #JubileeDay