Juneteenth is short for “June Nineteenth”. Juneteenth celebrates the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas, the last remaining slave state. Juneteenth marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed. The troops’ arrival came a full two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth honors the end to slavery in the United States. On 17 June 2021, it officially became a federal holiday.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation was made effective by Abraham Lincoln on 22 September 1863, it was only practically effective once Confederate-controlled territory was physically occupied by Union soldiers, which did not happen to Texas until the Civil War was over. Thus, liberation came late to Texas’ slaves. To make matters worse, the slave population of Texas soared during the Civil War as slave holders fled west to try to escape the fate of Union soldiers taking their plantations and freeing their slaves. Around a quarter million slaves lived in Texas by the war’s end.

On 19 June 1865, Union General Granger arrived in Galveston with 1,800 federal troops. There, Granger read General Order Number 3 to the people of Texas that stated, “… all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer.” All 250,000 slaves in that last remaining slave state were free from that moment, although there were cases of slave owners initially withholding the news from their slaves. Ultimately, many slaves left their former slave owners, though some chose to continue in the capacity of paid laborers. However the fundamental shift had occurred with all former slaves now being regarded fully equal with the rest of the state’s population before the law.