Happy Juneteenth

American Emancipation Day.
Not even close. It’s when the slaves in Galveston TX were told they were free. Slavery was still legal in the US when this happened, and in fact slaves were still held in bondage in large parts of the south and wouldn’t be freed until the 13th amendment was passed almost a year later.
 
Not even close. It’s when the slaves in Galveston TX were told they were free. Slavery was still legal in the US when this happened, and in fact slaves were still held in bondage in large parts of the south and wouldn’t be freed until the 13th amendment was passed almost a year later.
The emancipation proclaimiation was announced 2 years earlier. Even after the 13th ammendment was passed, people were still held in slavery. Just because the laws were passed doesn't mean they were enforced. I don't see why the details of the history matter all that much as it's still celebrating American Emancipation. The specific day that was chosen was arbitrary as it took several decades to figure out how to achieve it after it became law. Hell, it's still a problem when you get down to all of it.
 
Except the emancipation proclamation was issued 2 years earlier so it doesn’t celebrate that either
 
The fowing by Heather Cox Richardson from her blog of 6/18/2023:

Tomorrow is the federal holiday honoring Juneteenth, the celebration of the announcement in Texas on June 19th, 1865, that enslaved Americans were free.

On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant of the U.S. Army, but it was not until June 2 that General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department, the last major army of the Confederacy, to the United States, in Galveston, Texas. Smith then fled to Mexico.

Seventeen days later, Major General Gordon Granger of the U.S. Army arrived to take charge of the soldiers stationed there. On June 19, he issued General Order Number 3. It read:

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. 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.”

The order went on: “The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

While the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolishing enslavement except as punishment for a crime had passed through Congress on January 31, 1865, and Lincoln had signed it on February 1, the states were still in the process of ratifying it.

So Granger’s order referred not to the Thirteenth Amendment, but to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, which declared that Americans enslaved in states that were in rebellion against the United States “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons.” Granger was informing the people of Galveston that, Texas having been in rebellion on January 1, 1863, their world had changed. The federal government would see to it that, going forward, white people and Black people would be equal.

Black people in Galveston met the news Order No. 3 brought with celebrations in the streets, but emancipation was not a gift from white Americans. Black Americans had fought for the United States and worked in the fields to grow cotton the government could sell. Those unable to leave their homes had hidden U.S. soldiers, while those who could leave indicated their hatred of the Confederacy and enslavement with their feet. They had demonstrated their equality and their importance to the postwar United States.

The next year, after the Thirteenth Amendment had been added to the Constitution, Texas freedpeople gathered on June 19, 1866, to celebrate with prayers, speeches, food, and socializing the coming of their freedom. By the following year, the federal government encouraged “Juneteenth” celebrations, eager to explain to Black citizens the voting rights that had been put in place by the Military Reconstruction Act in early March 1867, and the tradition of Juneteenth began to spread to Black communities across the nation.
 
Good article. It should also be noted that the 13th amendment officially ended indentured servitude as well. Now if the FBI would just crack down on both of these as they are still going on today.
 
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