June 19, 1865, General Order Number 3, at various landmarks in the city of Galveston, Texas, a major port, Major-General Gordon Granger (1821-1876) (Union General in the Civil War) (career U. S. Army Officer) read the following announcement of Emancipation about two months after the conclusion of the Civil War and more than two years after President Lincoln’s 1863 “Emancipation Proclamation.”
So Proclaimed: 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.
No one knows definitely why this proclamation had not earlier come to Texas, but some thoughts are the following: the murder of President Lincoln’s messenger, landowners wanting to “get in” at least one more crop of cotton, information withheld deliberately by slave owners to make sure of a continued labor force.
People just learning of freedom and those who had known about it for some time must all have wondered, “Just what is the deal? Why and how did this delay happen?”
JUNETEENTH is apparently a combination of “June” and “Nineteenth.” And during 1866, many celebrations were held to honor the formerly enslaved and to uplift African-American people as a whole. Unfortunately, resistances to these gatherings arose.
However, in 1872, several local churches joined together to take in funds to purchase the land for “EMANCIPATION PARK.” (This park and also Emancipation Community Center are located at 3018 Emancipation Ave. in the 3rd Ward Area of Houston, and this is the oldest park in Houston and in Texas.)
Juneteenth seems to have been mainly a “Texas Thing” for quite some time, but did grow in importance with the advent of the “Civil Rights Movement” and continued to expand until, in 1980, Texas adopted it as a State Holiday. Nearly all states now observe June 19 as either a state holiday or an official observance.
And, a “life-long Texas lady” called Ms. Opal Lee (who has a Master’s Degree and has been a schoolteacher, counselor, and Historical Society leader) (is called by some “the Grandmother of Juneteenth”) is spearheading a movement to make JUNETEENTH a NATIONAL HOLIDAY and would like for it to be celebrated with all the vigor, pomp, circumstance, eating, and “hoopla” as is the “4th of July,” for she reminds that “We weren’t free in 1776!”
This lady made the quest her own at the age of 89 in 2016 and has even travelled to Washington, D. C., to present her petitions and ideas.
She says she refuses to “let the efforts that have been made so far die on the vine” and wants to “educate, celebrate, inform, and bring all people together.” She states that “nobody is free until all people are free.”
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