WHAT IS JUNETEENTH? Juneteenth is an annual observance to celebrate the date Union soldiers enforced the
Emancipation Proclamation freeing all remaining slaves in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865. Texas was the last
state in rebellion, following the end of the Civil War, to allow enslavement. Although the rumors of freedom
were widespread prior to this, actual emancipation was not announced in the last state practicing enslavement at
the end of the Civil War until General Gordon Granger came to Galveston, Texas and issued General Order No. 3,
on the “19th of June“, almost two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
Happy Juneteenth
