The story of the Juneteenth: how people came to celebrate it in the United States Our America: Black Freedom

PHILADELPHIA – 2022 marks the 156th anniversary of Junta, a holiday that recognizes the first day of freedom for enslaved Africans in Texas and commemorates the end of slavery in the United States as a whole.

A proclamation of release issued by President Abraham Lincoln released the enslaved people in the Confederate states in 1863. It was a measure designed to punish the Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War and did not apply to enslaved Africans in border states.

He also failed to free those held captive in Texas. It did not occur until June 19, 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger landed in Galveston, Texas, and issued General Order № 3. It is widely believed that enslaved Africans in Texas were unaware of the announcement of Granger’s release.

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However, some historians dispute this assertion.

“I think it may be a historical mistake that people in South Texas did not know about the cessation of slavery,” said Dr. Claude Clegg, a professor at Chapel Hill University with a joint reception from Africans, African Americans and the diaspora. Research.

“Although information is moving slowly during this time, there has been enough troop movement, enough military material movement and enough information movement so that people even in isolated Galveston, Texas, know what is happening in relation to the military effort.” , – explained Clegg.

“It wasn’t so much that people didn’t know. What was more was that the slave owners of the Confederacy in Texas simply did not want to give up their human property, ”Clegg added.

A year after black men, women and children were released in Galveston, the first Juntaite celebration, also known as Liberation Day, Liberation Day and Jubilee Day in the early years, took place.

“The moment of emancipation is a kind of explosion of nationality, nationality, humanity of people of African descent, and the Juntent is a marker of a new beginning, as a new nation emerging from slavery,” Clegg explained.

In honor of June, we tell stories of what black freedom means today, from the 94-year-old’s aspiration to a national holiday to the struggle for reparations for cultural holidays. Click here to get more stories from your city and across the country.