Celebrating Juneteenth

Juneteenth is one of the oldest holidays celebrated in America. On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas to announce that all slaves were free. This was nearly three years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was signed to end slavery in the United States and its territories. Texas, being one of the remotest states in the union, was the last to hear the news proclaimed, “That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thence forward, and forever free … “ 

General Granger’s announcement of the end of slavery marked a significant moment in American history. The more than 250,000 newly freed slaves in Texas called this day, Independence Day, and commemorated it in joyful celebration with music, food, and ceremony. In 1980, Texas became the first state to make it an official state holiday. Juneteenth became a federal holiday on June 17, 2021. President Joseph Biden proclaimed Juneteenth a Day of Observance and called on all Americans to “acknowledge and condemn the history of slavery in our Nation and recognize how the impact of America’s original sin remains. I call on every American to celebrate the emancipation of all Black Americans and commit together to eradicate systemic racism and inequity that can never be tolerated and must always be fought against.”

Bentley Library celebrates this day with books, audiobooks, online collections, and research guides and commemorates the day that news of emancipation finally reached the enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865.