What is Juneteenth?

You might have seen in the news earlier this week that Congress is about to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. If you’re thinking I left something off, like I meant “June Nineteenth,” I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised because I have a history degree, from a real college and everything and yet I had never heard of Juneteenth until I started working here at the paper back in 2010 and I heard some of the production people talking about a “Juneteenth” special section they were working on.

I, of course, had to ask, and then I did a little looking into it on my own. Juneteenth is an unofficial holiday celebrated annually on the 19th of June (which is tomorrow) in the parts of the United States to commemorate Union army general Gordon Granger's reading of federal orders in the city of Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, proclaiming that all enslaved persons in the U.S. state of Texas were now free. If you’re remembering that the Civil War ended in April of that year and that the Emancipation Proclamation had formally freed slaves in 1864, Texas was the most remote of the slave states, with a low presence of Union troops to enforce those mandates.

Juneteenth was first celebrated in 1866 in Texas. It spread across the South and often centered on a food and festivals. During the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, it was part of the movement and grew in popularity again in the 1970s with a focus on African American culture and arts.

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I’m sure the COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to most, if not all, Juneteenth celebrations last year, but 155 years on, it’s worth at least knowing what it is, and if making it a federal holiday means giving some recognition to an important historical event, I’m all for it. Will it catch on, particularly in circles outside the Black community? It’s hard to say. It’ll be a nice holiday to stick between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, I suppose.

Maybe in time we’ll have big Juneteenth parades and fireworks and cookouts…

and mattress sales? Why are these holidays always accompanied by mattress sales? Anyway…

Happy Juneteenth, everyone!