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Origin of Juneteenth

Juneteenth celebrates the emancipation of the remaining enslaved African-Americans in the Confederacy states. Although the Emancipation Proclamation was made effective in 1863, it could not be implemented in places still under Confederate control, and not everyone in Confederate territory would immediately be freed. In the westernmost Confederate state, Texas, enslaved people would not be free until June 19, 1865. On this day Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas and announced that those enslaved were now free by executive decree. 

Juneteenth Flag of Freedom

Juneteenth Flag of Freedom

  • Juneteenth is a combination of the words June and nineteenth. 
  • It became an official state holiday in Texas in 1980. There is currently a movement to get the day recognized on a national level.
  • It is the oldest holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S.

            10 Facts: Juneteenth

Ebooks

The Emancipation Proclamation by Ann Heinrichs
Emancipation betrayed : the hidden history of Black organizing and white violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the bloody election of 1920 by Paul Ortiz
Illusions of emancipation : the pursuit of freedom and equality in the twilight of slavery by Joseph P Reidy
Embattled freedom : journeys through the Civil War's slave refugee camps by Amy Murrell Taylor
Many strides to freedom : African American women's unsung contributions and legacies by Janelle Renee Carter-Robinson
Lincoln and freedom : slavery, emancipation, and the Thirteenth Amendment by Harold Holzer
Abolition : a history of slavery and antislavery by Seymour Drescher
Eighty-Eight Years : the Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777-1865. by Patrick Rael
The long emancipation : the demise of slavery in the United States by Ira Berlin
Black slaves, Indian masters : slavery, emancipation, and citizenship in the Native American south by Barbara Krauthamer
Reparation and reconciliation : the rise and fall of integrated higher education by Christi Michelle Smith
The illustrated slave : empathy, graphic narrative, and the visual culture of the transatlantic abolition movement, 1800-1852 by Martha J Cutter
Quakers and abolition by Brycchan Carey
Historical dictionary of slavery and abolition by Martin A Klein
Final freedom : the Civil War, the abolition of slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment by Michael Vorenberg
The slave's cause : a history of abolition by Manisha Sinha
Standard-bearers of equality : America's first abolition movement by Paul J Polgar
New York's grand emancipation jubilee : essays on slavery, resistance, abolition, teaching, and historical memory by Alan J Singer
In the words of Frederick Douglass : quotations from liberty's champion by Frederick Douglass
Black legislators in Louisiana during Reconstruction by Charles Vincent
The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory by Bradley R Clampitt
After slavery : race, labor, and citizenship in the reconstruction South by Bruce E Baker
Stories of the South : race and the Reconstruction of southern identity, 1865-1915 by K Stephen Prince
We will be satisfied with nothing less : the African American struggle for equal rights in the North during Reconstruction by Hugh Davis
We ask only for even-handed justice : Black voices from Reconstruction, 1865-1877 by John David Smith
A free man of color and his hotel : race, Reconstruction, and the role of the federal government by Carol W Gelderman