On June 19 every year , millions of people across America fall together to lionise Juneteenth with parties , parades , supplicant breakfasts , golf game tournaments , cookouts and music .
And June 16 , 2021 , the House of Representativesvoted 415 - 14to make Juneteenth the 12th Union holiday . in the beginning , the Senate had nemine contradicente approved this bill . President Joe Biden signed it into jurisprudence June 17 , 2021 , and Union prole find June 18 off ( since June 19 , 2021 , was a Saturday ) . It was the first unexampled federal vacation created since Martin Luther King , Jr. , Day in 1983 .
If you do n’t sleep with what Juneteenth is , you ’re not alone . Not by a long shot .
" You ’d be surprised . There are many students who get to my course and they sort of never learned about the story of captivity , they ’ve never take about the Civil Rights Movement , " saysPaula Austin , a professor of history and African American & Black diaspora study and account at Boston University . " I think I ’ve had students who , because of where they ’re from or their families , live about Juneteenth and have really participated in the celebrations . But most scholarly person come and they do n’t know . "
The History of Juneteenth
On June 19 , 1865 , more than two months after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered toUlysses S. Grantat Appomattox , which all but end the Civil War , a U.S. Army officeholder arrived in Galveston , Texas , with two momentous announcements : the end of the Civil War ( word traveled comparatively slowly in those days ) and , with it , theend to slavery .
Maj . Gen. Gordon Granger passed onGeneral Order No . 3 , which say , in part :
Nobody is really quite sure why it take on so long for the news of emancipation to progress to Texas . Several account have been distinguish through the year , though none have ever been confirmed , including one of a messenger who was killed while on his way to Texas to tell the news of freedom . Others conceive owners of enslaved people simply never differentiate them they were free . The most likely is that there were simply not enough troops to impose theEmancipation Proclamation , whether the enslaved people knew of it or not , so things remained status quo — that is , until Maj . Gen. Granger show up .
After Maj . Gen. Granger ’s annunciation , some of the 250,000 enslaved mass in Texas straight off left for the promise of true freedom in the North , while others traveled to rejoin family extremity . " We all walked down the road vocalizing and shouting to beat the band , " one enslave woman , Molly Harrell , suppose in " The Slave Narratives of Texas . " Others stayed to recover paying piece of work in the theater and elsewhere .
That day marks what now is often call off Black Independence Day , or the Black Fourth of July . It is the American celebration of exemption from slavery .
Juneteenth was first observed , on the side , in Texas in 1866 . It was n’t formally recognized as a holiday in any state untilTexas did so in 1979 . Now , every state in the U.S. recognizes it afterSouth Dakota became the last stateto finally declare it a holiday Feb. 11 , 2022 .
" On this Clarence Day , we must face up the ugly parts of our account and observe the slave who suffered and died under a repressive regime . We must also pay tribute to all those who had the strength and judgment of conviction to fight to end slavery and keep our Union together,“U.S. Sen. Corey Booker ( D - NJ ) say in 2018 . " Juneteenth Independence Day is also an authoritative moment to recognize how far we have come and take note of how far we have yet to go . "
Free Without Freedom
The original Juneteenth was hardly the " Black Independence Day " that it often is shoot a line as today . After all , it hail month after the Civil War ended and more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed byPresident Abraham Lincoln . By the time enslaved people were declared spare in Texas , the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitutionhad already been pass by Congress and was well on its way to being sign by the states .
Not all enslaved people in Texas were straightaway freed either . Some , held bydefiant plantation possessor hell - bent on hanging onto their fashion of life , were not emancipated until much later . Some masters already knew that the war was over before Granger arrive and still tried to hold on to them .
Historical report show that some of the enslaved people who tried to leave were tracked down and killed . Many more stepped into a future tense of poverty , fear and uncertainty .
The blind smirch that many Americans carry for Juneteenth may be due to a universal ignorance of the holiday ’s history . It also may come from , as Austin suggest , a disinclination to totally face up the land ’s past with slavery , as well as its far - reach out and continue wake .
Celebrating Black Independence Day
Still , Juneteenth has persevered . Its observance wane through the years under the oppression ofJim Crow lawsand anti-Semite attitudes , but the festivities that lead off in Texas eventually spread to more land , and the idea of commemorating dim independence find fault up through theCivil right eraof the sixties . The parties cover today , for those who are cognisant enough to find them and to take part .
" The kinds of celebrations that I ’ve fancy and been a part of have been implausibly wonderful , " Austin says . " They ’re about Black culture , they ’re about Black chronicle , they ’re about the resistance and the resiliency of the disgraceful community . "
Several age before Granger made his resolution in Galveston , famed American oratorFrederick Douglass , himself a former enslaved valet de chambre , spoke to an emancipationist group in New York about another independence sidereal day , the Fourth of July . " What , to the American striver , is your quaternary of July,“Douglass said . " I respond ; a sidereal day that reveals to him , more than all other days in the yr , the gross unjustness and cruelty to which he is the constant dupe . "
The Juneteenth Flag
To those who observe Juneteenth ( despite its historically shaky outset and its still - unrealized toast ) the day still keep a promise — of freedom , of independence , of equality . And they have a flag to take flight that is full of symbols . It ’s red , white and blue , with a star in the center . The design was conceived by militant Ben Haith , father of the National Juneteenth Celebration Foundation ( NJCF ) in 1997 . Here ’s what each component of theflag interpret :
On Juneteenth , these are ideas deserving celebrate , more now than ever .
