Juneteenth: How to Observe & Understand the Holiday
- The United States’ newest federal holiday, celebrated annually on June 19, has quickly become its most puzzling.
- Is there a way to acknowledge the holiday without misappropriating it?
- This confusion likely emerged because many Americans did not even learn about Juneteenth until around when it became a federal holiday in 2021. Moreover, the Trump administration and...
Juneteenth, the U.S.’ newest federal holiday, commemorates June 19, 1865, the day Major General Granger announced the end of slavery in Texas. Delve into the holiday’s origins and why, four years after becoming a federal holiday, many Americans still question how too properly honor it. Understand the ancient context from General Order No. 3 to the ongoing fight for freedom. explore what this “second Independence Day” means today, and how initiatives to ban education about the very origins of the day add yet another layer of complexity. News Directory 3 explores Juneteenth’s importance. Discover what’s next …
The United States’ newest federal holiday, celebrated annually on June 19, has quickly become its most puzzling. Four years after President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence day Act, Americans have wrestled with the holidayS meaning.
What is Juneteenth? What is the proper way to celebrate it? Should holiday observers attend barbecues and cookouts? Should Juneteenth’s observance be a day of learning? Is there a way to acknowledge the holiday without misappropriating it?
This confusion likely emerged because many Americans did not even learn about Juneteenth until around when it became a federal holiday in 2021. Moreover, the Trump administration and state legislatures across the country have further intricate matters with their increased efforts to ban the type of education that led to the national recognition of the holiday in the first place.
‘All slaves are free’
Juneteenth – short for june Nineteenth – recognizes the day in 1865 when Maj.Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in galveston, Texas, with roughly 2,000 federal troops from the 13th Army Corps. Upon arriving, Granger issued General Order No. 3. The order read:
“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.”
National Archives
Granger’s order effectively freed 250,000 enslaved people in the region.
Though President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation,which freed the enslaved in all the states that had seceded from the U.S., nearly two years earlier, Texas, a Confederate state, rebelled against it.
At the time, Texas had a minimal number of Union soldiers to enforce the proclamation’s emancipation of enslaved people residing within Confederate territory. Consequently,many of those enslaved in Texas remained ignorant of the proclamation’s potential impact on their lives,or of the fact the civil War had functionally ended two months earlier.
In an interview published in 1941, Laura Smalley of Hempstead, Texas, remembered how her enslaver fought for the confederacy in the Civil War. He returned without informing those whom he enslaved of their freedom. In her interview, she recounted, “Old master didn’t tell, you know, they was free … I think now they say they worked them, six months after that.”
‘Second Independence Day’
June 19, 1865, a Monday, changed that.
The news of emancipation culminated a generations-long struggle for Black people to obtain a modicum of freedom in the U.S.
For this reason, some refer to Juneteenth as the nation’s second Independence Day. The end of bondage was ostensibly codified in the 13th amendment ratified later that year.
Spontaneous Juneteenth celebrations emerged almost immediately. Celebrants referred to the day as “Emancipation Day,” “Freedom day,” “Juneteenth” and “Jubilee Day.” The latter title alluded to the biblical period following seven sabbatical cycles that resulted in canceling debts and freeing the enslaved.
Flake’s Bulletin, a weekly, Galveston-based publication, reported on an Emancipation Celebration occurring on Jan. 2,1866,that included upward of 800 people. A similar gathering occurred in Galveston on june 19, 1866, in what is now the church known as Reedy Chapel AME. Annual celebrations continued, beginning in southeastern Texas, with events such as past reenactments, parades, picnics, music and speeches.
Mrs.Grace Murray Stephenson, Austin history Center, Austin Public library
Legacies of slavery
While the holiday marked a joyous occasion for some, Juneteenth met early and persistent opposition, particularly in the time following Reconstruction.
For years, local reporting spoke of Juneteenth, as the Galveston Historical Foundation put it, in a “flagrantly racist nature.” Additionally, the racist stereotyping – “idleness” – in the final sentence of Granger’s order together illustrated its complicated nature while also “[foreshadowing] that the fight for freedom would continue,” National Archives staffer Michael Davis wrote in 2020.
Historian Keisha Blain explains, “The enslavement o