Official Juneteenth Committee, Austin, Texas, June 19, 1900
(courtesy of Austin History Center, Austin Public Library)
TheRoot.com
What Is Juneteenth?
100 Amazing Facts About the Negro: Learn about the most popular annual celebration of black emancipation.
| Posted: June 17, 2013
Editor's note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black history series, please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these "amazing facts" are an homage.
(The Root) -- Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 36: What is Juneteenth and why are 42 states and the District of Columbia celebrating it this year?
The First Juneteenth
"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 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." --General Orders, Number 3; Headquarters District of Texas, Galveston, June 19, 1865
When Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued the above order, he had no
idea that, in establishing the Union Army's authority over the people of
Texas, he was also establishing the basis for a holiday, "Juneteenth"
("June" plus "Nineteenth"), today the most popular annual celebration of
emancipation from slavery in the United States. After all, by the time
Granger assumed command of the Department of Texas, the Confederate
capital in Richmond had fallen; the "Executive" to whom he referred,
President Lincoln, was dead; and the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery
was well on its way to ratification. But Granger wasn't just a few
months late. The Emancipation Proclamation itself, ending slavery in the
Confederacy (at least on paper), had taken effect two and a half years
before, and in the interim, close to 200,000 black men had enlisted in
the fight. So, formalities aside, wasn't it all over, literally, but the
shouting?
It would be easy to think so in our world of immediate communication,
but as Granger and the 1,800 bluecoats under him soon found out, news
traveled slowly in Texas. Whatever Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered in
Virginia, the Army of the Trans-Mississippi had held out until late
May, and even with its formal surrender on June 2, a number of ex-Rebels
in the region took to bushwhacking and plunder.
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