Juneteenth, which falls on June 19, marks the date that the last enslaved African Americans were granted their freedom. On that day in 1865, Union soldiers led by Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in the coastal city of Galveston, Texas, to deliver General Order No. 3, officially ending slavery in the state.
The final act of liberation came months after the Confederate Army’s surrender ended the Civil War, and more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865, two months before his proclamation made it to Texas. ...
“I often equate Juneteenth with our country’s inability to communicate,” said House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. “The failure to communicate kept them in slavery for another two and half years.”
