Today is Juneteenth – a federal holiday in the United States and a state holiday in 28 states. Officially known as Emancipation Day and also called Juneteenth Independence Day and Freedom Day, Juneteenth is a portmanteau word for June and nineteenth and commemorates the June 19th 1865 announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas and the emancipation of African-American slaves throughout the Confederate South.
On January 1st 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared the end of slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation. Two and half years later, and two months after the end of the Civil War, Union troops arrived in Galveston on June 19th 1865 to find that news of the proclamation had not yet reached Galveston and that people were still being held as slaves in Texas.
The leader of the Union Troops, General Gordon Granger then formally announced the emancipation from the balcony of the former Confederate Army headquarters.
Granger’s order was based loosely on Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. (The Thirteenth Amendment, which made slavery unconstitutional, wasn’t ratified until December 6, 1865.) The order first declared that the formerly enslaved were free based on “absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property” between Black people and those who had presumed legal ownership of them.
Although the news of the emancipation reached towns at different times across the South, there was a collective decision to recognize 19th June as the date of the emancipation. The date of the proclamation itself (January 1st) wasn’t considered as the people wanted to mark the date when the slaves’ lives were actually affected by the new freedom.
Still Pride Month!
EDITORS NEEDED!
Thanks, Bob!
Today is the birthday, in 1950, of American singer and songwriter Ann Wilson, from American rock band Heart. They has sold over 35 million records worldwide, placed 29 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, and have scored top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2010s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeMvMNpvB5M
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