For more than 156 years African Americans have tried unsuccessfully to make this date a national holiday. This journey to becoming a national holiday began on June 19, 1865 when thousands of Union Soldiers came to the island in Texas where the city of Galveston is located, Galveston Island.
The soldiers informed both plantation owners and enslaved African Americans that slavery in Union-controlled areas had ended and that they were free.
Plantation owners knew they were free on January 1, 1863 but continued to work them for free as slaves. Union soldiers brought that to an end on June 19, 1865. The enslaved people rejoiced and sang praises when they heard the news.
Along the way were millions who wanted this holiday. Many African American men and women worked tirelessly over the years to get to this point. Many were meet with death and death threats for their effort. Many were terrorized on a daily basis by hate-filled mobs. Many died before their hopes were fulfilled.
This journey to recognize African Americans as “deserving” of the freedoms guaranteed by the Founding Fathers, of which Abraham Lincoln spoke, now seems within reach.
This bill, once passed by the House and signed by President Joe Biden, will make a Juneteenth the 11th annual national holiday.
The 2021 journey to Juneteenth!
Today, Tuesday, June 15, 2021, the US Senate Passed the 2021 Juneteenth bill, titled the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, with 60 Senate cosponsors. Juneteenth celebrates the end of slavery on June 19, 1865.
Today, Wednesday June 16, 2021, The House of Representatives passed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act with 415-14 vote.
Today, Thursday, June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden, accompanied by Vice President Kamala Harris, signed into law, at the White House at 4:00 pm EDT, the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act.
This Juneteenth law becomes the 11th annual national holiday to be celebrated every year on June 19. All across America African Americans, Americans of various backgrounds, and many other ethnic groups celebrated the news as they watched the signing live on television.
On Saturday, June 19, 2021, all across the land, festivals, concerts, banquets, and more … celebrating the end of this long journey to JUNETEENTH, the 11th annual national holiday.
Freedom Day • Jubilee Day • Liberation Day
What is Juneteenth?
Juneteenth is an annual holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States. Originating in Texas, it is now celebrated annually in this 21st century on the 19th of June throughout the United States, with varying official recognition.
Specifically, Juneteenth commemorates Union Army Major General Gordon Granger (with 2,000 federal troops) announcing federal orders at Ashton Villa on the corner of 24th Street and 2328 Broadway Street in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, proclaiming that all slaves in Texas were free.
General Granger’s 2,000 federal troops marched through Galveston reading General Order No. 3 first at the Union Army Headquarters located at Strand Street and 22nd Street, then at the 1861 Custom House and courthouse before marching to the Negro Church on Broadway (renamed Reedy Chapel-AME Church). These troops were in Galveston to enforce the emancipation of slaves.
When was slavery abolished?
United States 16th President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, or Proclamation 95, was an executive order issued on September 22, 1862 during the civil war. This order had officially outlawed slavery in Texas and the other states in rebellion against the Union, almost two and a half years before General Order No. 3 was read on June 19, 1865.
Emancipation Proclamation or Proclamation 95
“That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.”
The emancipation of all slaves began on January 1, 1863. Texas being the most remote of the slave states had a low presence of Union troops after the American Civil War had ended, thus federal law or legal enforcement there had been slow and inconsistent, at best, before General Granger’s announcement on June 19, 1865.
Although Juneteenth is commonly thought of as celebrating the end of slavery in the United States, it was still legal and practiced in two Union border states (Delaware and Kentucky) until December 6, 1865, when ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished non-penal slavery nationwide.
More isolated geographically, planters and other slaveholders had migrated into Texas from eastern states to escape the fighting, and many brought enslaved people with them, increasing by the thousands the enslaved population in the state at the end of the Civil War.
Life of enslaved people in Texas
Although most enslaved people lived in rural areas, more than 1,000 resided in both Galveston and Houston by 1860, with several hundred in other large towns.
Most enslaved people worked as house servants or on farms on the edges of towns, but others served as cooks and waiters in hotels, as teamsters or boatmen, or as coachmen or cabinet makers and skilled artisans, such as blacksmiths, carpenters, and barbers.
Plantation slaves generally lived in one or two-room log cabins. Most field hands received two sets of clothing twice each year, with a hat and coat for winter. Meals often consisted of bread, molasses, sweet potatoes, hominy, and for meat, beef, chicken, and pork.
Slaves often lived similarly to the whites in Texas, especially those new to the territory and just getting started. The whites, however, could hope to improve their lives with their own hard work, while the slaves could have no such hope or expectation as, of course, their work belonged by law to their owners and not to them.
By 1865, there were an estimated 250,000 enslaved people in Texas with little or no hope for a better life.
What is General Order No. 3?
The news of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865, reached Texas later in the month. The western Army of the Trans-Mississippi did not surrender until June 2.
On June 18, Union Army General Gordon Granger arrived at Galveston Island with 2,000 federal troops to occupy Texas on behalf of the federal government. The following day, standing on the balcony of Galveston’s Ashton Villa, Granger read aloud the contents of “General Order No. 3”, announcing the total emancipation of those held as slaves:
“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.”
Texas Takes Action
Although this event is popularly thought of as “the end of slavery”, actually, the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to those enslaved in Union-held territory, who would not be freed until a proclamation several months later, on December 18, 1865, that the Thirteenth Amendment had been ratified on December 6, 1865. The freedom of formerly enslaved people in Texas was given legal status in a series of Texas Supreme Court decisions between 1868 and 1874.
Formerly enslaved people in Galveston, Texas celebrated after the announcement. The following year, freedmen in Texas organized the first of what became the annual celebration of “Jubilee Day” on June 19 (Juneteenth).
Descendants need help to be “free”?
Descendants of those former enslaved people have waited 155 years for the promises of “freedom” and “absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property” to be fulfilled without systemic racism, harassment and denial of just and fair treatment under law in housing, jobs, employment, education, and finances.
A national holiday will bring support from and awareness to the general public about these issues in an effort to heal the centuries old “wounds”.
These descendants are a part of society, having earned the rights due them. Now society can have an “all hands on deck” approach to finding solutions to the barriers that prevents all citizens from having the “freedom” and “absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property”.
The goal: Equal opportunity in all areas of life along with unbiased treatment as citizens who worked to build this great nation.
What about a national holiday?
The 21st century has brought renewed calls to make Juneteenth a national holiday, joining several states, including Texas, who recognizes the importance of “mending fences” with the descendants of the more than 4 million enslaved people who were bought and sold, humiliated, harassed, tortured, murdered, as well as sexually assaulted, and worked without monetary compensation for over two hundred years.
The US National Archives said on Thursday, June 18, 2020, that the original handwritten decree is believed to have been recently discovered, after a researcher was tasked with unearthing it due to heightened interested in the holiday.
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, ‘all slaves are free,’ ” the military order reads.
“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 elaborately written note was found in a book of formal orders in Washington DC.
“I think it’s terrific. I think the timing is just amazing,” David Ferriero, the head librarian of the Archives told the Washington Post.
Cities and states take action!
In the 19th century, Southern states, faced with the prospect of having to give up slavery, formed the Confederacy and broke away from the United States, leading to the 1861-1865 Civil War that resulted in the death of over 600,000 soldiers. Mississippi declared its secession from the Union on March 23, 1861.
State of Mississippi
Governor Tate Reeves of Mississippi, a former slave state, part of the Confederate States of America that went to war with the United States to preserve the institution of slavery, tweeted (about removing the Confederate flag from the state flag) on Saturday, June 27, 2020, that “The legislature has been deadlocked for days as it considers a new state flag. The argument over the 1894 flag has become as divisive as the flag itself and it’s time to end it. If they send me a bill this weekend, I will sign it.”
Governor Reeves said the state (a state that help form the Confederacy on February 4, 1861) should find a way to come together, and heal its “wounds”. The “wounds” and scars of slavery inflicted by abusive slaveholders, slave patrols and local police in every community of color runs very deep with the blood of slaves and their descendants.
Beginning in 1822, slaves in Mississippi were protected by law from cruel and unusual punishment by their owners. The Southern slave codes made the willful killing of a slave illegal in most cases. For example, the 1860 Mississippi case of George W. Oliver v. The State charged the defendant with murdering his own slave.
White supremacists in the Mississippi Legislature set the state flag design in 1894 during backlash to the political power that African Americans gained after the Civil War.
Democratic Sen. David Jordan, who is African American, has pushed for decades to change the flag. He smiled broadly after Saturday’s vote and said, “This is such a metamorphosis.”
“There are economic issues. There are issues involving football or whatever,” Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said Saturday. “But this vote came from the heart. That makes it so much more important.”
“We should not be under any illusion that a vote in the Capitol is the end of what must be done … the job before us to bring the state together and I intend to work night and day to do it,” Reeves said in his tweet. “We must find a way to come together. To heal our wounds, to forgive, to resolve that a page has been turned, to trust each other. With God’s help, we can” said Governor Tate Reeves of Mississippi.
Today, Saturday, June 27, 2020, in the state of Mississippi, African Americans constitute approximately 38 percent of the state’s population. Most have ancestors who were enslaved. Therefore, after the removal of the divisive Confederate flag, with red, white and blue stripes and 13 white stars with the Confederate battle emblem in the corner, will serve as a positive message to the world that a true effort at the state level will result in healing the wounds.
Mississippi Takes “Healing” Action
Republican governor Tate Reeves signed a historic bill withdrawing the state’s 126-year-old flag on Tuesday, June 30, 2020.
“This is not a political moment to me but a solemn occasion to lead our Mississippi family to come together, to be reconciled, and to move on,” Reeves said in a statement. “We are a resilient people defined by our hospitality. We are a people of great faith. Now, more than ever, we must lean on that faith, put our divisions behind us, and unite for a greater good.”
Democratic Mississippi 57th District state representative Edward Blackmon Jr (72), who is Black, argued that the state flag, “ought to be something that we all feel a sense of pride that when we see it, we know that that’s about us. Not just some of us.”
Reeves said on Tuesday: “The people of Mississippi, Black and White, and young and old, can be proud of a banner that puts our faith front and center. We can unite under it. We can move forward together.”
Mississippi Gets A New Flag!
The new flag of Mississippi features a white magnolia blossom and the words “In God We Trust” on a red field with a gold-bordered blue pale. This flag was chosen by the Commission to Redesign the Mississippi State Flag and was approved by state referendum on November 3, 2020. Afterward, it was passed by the state legislature on January 6, 2021, and it became the official state flag of the U.S. state of Mississippi on January 11, 2021. It replaces the previous flag that displayed the Confederate battle insignia in the upper left hand corner, which was retired on June 30, 2020.
Juneteenth becoming an official statewide holiday will be a good place to begin the next step in “mending community fences” and the healing process as we “move forward together”.
As the U.S. Constitution says in the preamble … “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility” and “promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”.
State of New York
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an order making Juneteenth – also known as Emancipation Day and Freedom Day – a paid holiday for state workers.
Governor Cuomo said he would introduce legislation to make the day a holiday for all New Yorkers by 2021.
State of Virginia
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam also promised to make Juneteenth a holiday by 2021 in the former capitol of the Confederacy which rebelled against the US during the Civil War for the legal right to enslave black people.
State of Pennsylvania
In Pennsylvania, Governor Tom Wolf has also signed an order making Juneteenth a holiday for state workers.
“Freedom for all is not fully realized until every person is truly free. This Juneteenth we have an opportunity to unite against injustice and create lasting change,” Governor Wolf said.
New York City
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that Juneteenth – the 19 June date which marks the end of US slavery – will become an official holiday. Beginning in 2021 Juneteenth will also be a public school holiday.
Susan B. Anthony and social equality
Susan B. Anthony of Rochester, New York (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906 (aged 86), a women’s suffrage leader arrested on November 18, 1872, by a U.S. Deputy Marshal and charged with illegally voting.
She was convicted for voting in 1872 in violation of laws permitting only men to vote. On the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, Susan B. Anthony received a complete pardon from the U.S. President on August 18, 2020. Also, to honor Anthony, in 1999 the Susan B. Anthony one dollar U.S. coin was issued in her honor.
Anthony was committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.
What help for “free” slaves?
Susan B. Anthony expressed a vision of a racially integrated society that was radical for a time when abolitionists were debating the question of what was to become of the slaves after they were freed, and when people were calling for African Americans to be shipped to newly established colonies in Africa.
In a speech in 1861, Anthony said, “Let us open to the colored man all our schools … Let us admit him into all our mechanic shops, stores, offices, and lucrative business avocations … let him rent such pew in the church, and occupy such seat in the theatre … Extend to him all the rights of Citizenship.”
The 15th Amendment and “free” slaves?
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen’s “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” It was ratified on February 3, 1870.
Free slaves were granted many rights including the right to vote for African American men only at first, not African American women. Many of those rights have been denied. Advocates, like Susan B. Anthony, are continuing to fight for all rights granted to citizens.
Juneteenth as a federal holiday would serve as a celebration and commemoration that would help to erase the “wounds” of the past and confirm the existence of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States.
The 19th Amendment and women rights.
On August 18, 1920, the ratification of the 19th Amendment which ensured women the right to vote was passed. It’s also known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment and was certified on August 26, 1920.
The Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed the right of American women to vote, was colloquially known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. However, women of color were prevented from casting ballots for decades afterward because of poll taxes, literacy tests, overt racism, intimidation, and laws that prevented the grandchildren of slaves from voting. Much of that didn’t change until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
After it was ratified in 1920, the National American Woman Suffrage Association, whose character and policies were strongly influenced by Anthony, was transformed into the League of Women Voters, which is still an active force in U.S. politics.
Abraham Lincoln’s slavery speech.
Abraham Lincoln’s Peoria speech was made in Peoria, Illinois on October 16, 1854. This speech was the turning point of his antislavery campaign. It was also a reflection of his principles including the validity of the Constitution as foundation for believing “all men are created equal”. Lincoln’s speech in many ways foreshadowed the political future that he would soon embark upon:
“Little by little, but steadily as man’s march to the grave, we have been giving up the old for the new faith. Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a ‘sacred right of self-government.’ These principles cannot stand together. They are as opposite as God and Mammon; and whoever holds to the one must despise the other.” — Abraham Lincoln
The rights of citizenship for all.
Both men and women worked tirelessly for social equality. Just as women like Susan B. Anthony believed all people should have the rights of citizenship and a reminder to celebrate those rights. Juneteenth as a national holiday every June 19th will accomplish just that.
What about the federal government?
In Washington, the most senior Republican in the Senate said on Thursday, June 18, 2020 that he would introduce a bill to make Juneteenth (June 19) a federal holiday. As of now, all states honor Juneteenth as a state holiday. Many democratic members of congress (some for over 20 years) have joined this effort to make Juneteenth (June 19) a national federal holiday.
Updated on June 15, 2021
Today, Tuesday, June 15, 2021, the promise made was fulfilled. The Bill making Juneteenth a national holiday was introduced and passed by the United States Senate. This 2021 bill, titled the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, has 60 Senate cosponsors.
Now the Bill goes to the House and then to President Joe Biden for his signature. Then throughout the land, in all states, and territories, Juneteenth will be a holiday to be celebrated by all Americans, especially African Americans who have celebrated it since the 1800s.
Today, cities and towns across the country mark the date, June 19th, with festivals, parades, barbecues, music, concerts, and educational events.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said it best. “Now more than ever, we need to learn from our history and continue to form a more perfect union.”
For more information on local Juneteenth celebrations in your area, please feel free to go here or contact us.
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