Why We Celebrate Juneteenth
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Juneteenth celebrates the end of slavery in the United States. The holiday is observed every year on June 19. On this day in 1865, the last enslaved people in America — a group in Galveston,Texas — learned they were free.
The origins of Juneteenth
The events leading to this historic day began with the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The document — released during the American Civil War (1861-1865) — declared enslaved people in ten Confederate states, including Texas to be free. But the law did not apply to the enslaved people in the border states that had remained loyal to the Union. This included Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, Tennessee, and Maryland. The 13th Amendment — passed by the US Congress on January 31, 1865 — closed the loophole and abolished slavery across the nation.
However, about 250,000 enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, remained unaware of these laws until June 19, 1865 — two months after the end of the war. On that day, Union troops arrived and announced that slavery had ended. One year later, on June 19, 1866, the community marked the first anniversary of their freedom with cookouts, dances, and prayers. This began what would become the Juneteenth tradition.
Juneteenth celebrations
As the years passed, Juneteenth celebrations grew and spread. Also known as Emancipation Day or Freedom Day, the holiday was observed in different ways across the US. In 1980, Texas became the first state to officially recognize Juneteenth as a holiday. Over the following decades, more states gradually followed suit.
The growing recognition of Juneteenth was promising. But it was not enough for Opal Lee. The Fort Worth, Texas, resident had been pushing to make Juneteenth a national holiday since 1989. In 2016, at the age of 89, Lee led a symbolic walk from Fort Worth to Washington, DC. She walked 2.5 miles in each city along the way. The distance represented the nearly two and a half years it took for enslaved people in Texas to learn they were free. Her efforts helped bring Juneteenth into the national spotlight.
Lee's dream finally came true on June 17, 2021, when former President Joe Biden signed legislation making Juneteenth a federal holiday. It was the first new national holiday in the US since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established in 1983. Lee, now 98, hopes it will bring Americans together.
"Juneteenth is not a Black thing, and it's not a Texas thing," she says. "People all over, I don't care what nationality, we all bleed red blood."
Resources: nmaahc.si.edu, NPR.com, Wikipedia.org
