The liberation of African-American slaves is commemorated on Juneteenth, a federal holiday in the United States.
It's also a day dedicated to honoring African-American culture. Since 1865, it has been observed yearly on June 19
in several regions of the United States, with its origins in Galveston, Texas.
Slavery was formally prohibited in Texas and all other Southern separatist states of the old Confederacy by President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued on January 1, 1863. The majority of the time, Union forces were used to enforce the Proclamation.
As the most distant state of the former Confederacy, Texas had experienced an extension of slavery and had a minimal presence of Union forces when the American Civil War ended, thus enforcement had been slow and uneven prior to Granger's proclamation.
Although the Emancipation Proclamation abolished slavery in the Confederate States, it did not abolish slavery in the Union states. Slavery was lawful in two Union border states – Delaware and Kentucky – for a brief time after the Confederacy fell.
On December 6, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified and the slaves were liberated.
Celebrations began in Texas in 1866, with church-centered communal gatherings. It extended across the South in the 1920s and 1930s, becoming increasingly commercialized and frequently centered on a food festival. The celebrations of those who took part in the Great Migration out of the South were extended to other regions of the country. These festivities were overshadowed by the nonviolent drive to win civil rights during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, but they resurfaced in the 1970s with a focus on African American freedom and African-American arts.
Public readings of the Emancipation Proclamation, singing classic songs and readings of works by notable African-American writers are common celebratory traditions. Rodeos, street fairs, cookouts, family reunions, park parties, historical reenactments, and Miss Juneteenth contests are all part of the Juneteenth festivities. Juneteenth was the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established in 1983 when it became a federal holiday on June 17, 2021 though President Joe Biden.
