How have Juneteenth celebrations evolved? Lee was one of the people standing next to Biden when he signed Juneteenth into law. Soon, celebrities and politicians were lending their support. In 2016, the “little old lady in tennis shoes” walked through her home city of Fort Worth, then in other cities before arriving in Washington, D.C. The 96-year-old had vivid memories of celebrating Juneteenth as a child in East Texas with music, food and games. Opal Lee, a former teacher and activist, is credited with rallying others behind a campaign to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. Hundreds of companies give workers the day off. Juneteenth is a paid holiday for state employees in Texas, New York, Virginia, Washington and Nevada. states now hold celebrations honoring Juneteenth as a holiday or a day of recognition, like Flag Day. It began with church picnics and speeches and spread as Black Texans moved elsewhere. The holiday has also been called Juneteenth Independence Day, Freedom Day, second Independence Day and Emancipation Day. It’s a portmanteau blending the words “June” and “nineteenth.” Events around the holiday include concerts, parades and readings of the Emancipation Proclamation. The next year, the free people of Galveston celebrated Juneteenth, an observance that has continued and has spread around the world. Slavery was permanently abolished six months later, when Georgia ratified the 13th Amendment. 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.” 3, which said: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. Gordon Granger and his troops arrived in the Gulf Coast city on June 19, 1865, more than two months after Confederate Gen. News that the war had ended and those who had been enslaved were free finally reached Galveston when Union Maj. That’s why, you know, we celebrate that day.” “I think now they say they worked them, six months after that. “Old master didn’t tell, you know, they was free,” Smalley said. In a 1941 interview, Laura Smalley, who was freed from a plantation near Bellville, Texas, recalled that the man she referred to as “old master” came home from fighting in the Civil War and didn’t tell the people he had enslaved what had happened. Even then, some white people who had profited from their forced, unpaid labor were reluctant to share the news. Retrieved October 20, 2020.The celebrations began with enslaved people in Galveston, Texas.Īlthough President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed enslaved people in 1863, it could not be enforced in many places in the South until the Civil War ended in 1865. "Black Americans are leaving their homes to start their own all-Black communities".
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