Today marks the 156th anniversary of Juneteenth, which celebrates the effective end to slavery in the U.S. Now a federal holiday, it marks the day when news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached the last remaining enslaved persons in Galveston, Texas.
Red, white and blue are the colors of the American flag, but they also grace the face of another quintessential American banner: the official Juneteenth flag."I think that it may be historical fallacy that people in southern Texas did not know about the ending of slavery," said Dr. Claud Clegg, a professor at the University of Chapel Hill with a joint appointment in African, African American, and Diaspora Studies.
"Even though information travels slow during this time period, there was enough going on, enough movement of troops, enough movement of war material and enough movement of information for people even in isolated Galveston, Texas, to know what was going on in regard to the war effort," Clegg explained.
"It wasn't so much that people did not know. It was more the case that Confederate slaveholders in Texas simply did not want to give up their human property," Clegg added. One year after freedom was granted to Black men, women and children in Galveston came the first celebration of Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day, Liberation Day and Jubilee Day in its early years.
"The emancipation moment is sort of an outburst of the peoplehood, the peopleness, the humanity of people of African descent, and Juneteenth is the marker of that new beginning as a new people coming out of slavery," Clegg explained.
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