The 19 June commemoration of General Order No. 3, which announced the end of slavery in Texas in 1865; a federal holiday since 2021.
Juneteenth, a blend of June and nineteenth, marks 19 June 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger, commanding the Union army’s District of Texas, issued General Order No. 3 at Galveston. His troops had arrived the day before. The order began: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” It came more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
The same order advised freedpeople “to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages” and warned that they would not be allowed to gather at military posts, a sign that the army meant to preserve the labor system even as it proclaimed freedom. Roughly 250,000 enslaved people in Texas learned of their freedom gradually over the months that followed. Slavery was not abolished nationwide until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on 6 December 1865.
Freed Texans began marking the day almost at once. Early Juneteenth gatherings doubled as political rallies where freedpeople learned about their voting rights, and they grew into community celebrations with picnics, parades, barbecues, and dramatic readings. Some communities bought land for Emancipation Parks; in Houston, land for one was purchased in 1872. Texas recognized Juneteenth as a state holiday in 1980, through legislation championed by Representative Al Edwards, and held its first state-sponsored observance in 1981.
The holiday gained national prominence after 2020. The activist Opal Lee gathered more than a million signatures in support of federal recognition, and on 17 June 2021 President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, nearly 156 years after Granger’s order. The original handwritten order is preserved at the National Archives, which describes Juneteenth as the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.
See also: Emancipation, Reconstruction, Freedmen’s Bureau
Sources
- National Archives, “National Archives Safeguards Original ‘Juneteenth’ General Order.” Link
- Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas, “Juneteenth.” Link
- National Archives, “13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865).” Link
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