What happened on the first Juneteenth? (Article originally published in 2015)
which is seen by many as the unofficial end of the American Civil War. But word of the Civil War’s end didn’t reach Texas until June 19, 1865.Texas got the big news a little late. On June 19, 1865 — nearly a month after the Civil War ended and more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation — General Gordon Granger of the Union Army landed at Galveston, Texas, and read aloud General Order No.
Spontaneous celebrations broke out in Galveston and spread around the state — and thus the holiday of “Juneteenth” began. What followed, however, was more complicated than the early celebration suggested. Proof could be found in a New Yorkfrom that July, headlined “The Negro Question in Texas.” The story reported that Granger’s order had specified to the people of Texas that the freedom of the former slaves “involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.”
It seemed that the people of Houston didn’t quite get the message: freedmen were being interrogated as to whom they belonged to; if they did not name someone, they would be accused of idleness and put to work for the city.
was created after the freed population pooled money in 1872 to purchase the land in order to use it for Juneteenth celebrations., commemorating the fact that “Juneteenth celebrations have thus been held for 130 years to honor the memory of all those who endured slavery and especially those who moved from slavery to freedom,” though it is not a nationally recognized holiday.
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