June 19 is Juneteenth, a celebration of the end of slavery in Texas.
Juneteenth has long been celebrated nationwide, but more so in the South. It became a federal holiday in 2021 when President Joe Biden signed a law declaring a national holiday for Juneteenth, the day long recognized as the official end of slavery in the United States.
Still, Juneteenth is particularly Texan, with roots in Galveston in 1865. The strongest advocate for its national recognition, Civil Rights icon and “the grandmother of Juneteenth,” has been Opal Lee of Fort Worth.
What is Juneteenth?
Although Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation declared all slaves in rebelling states were free on Jan. 1, 1863, many slave owners did not recognize the proclamation.
Even after Robert E. Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865, news of the Union victory didn’t reach Texas until May. It wasn’t until Union Army Major Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston on June 18 and read the order announcing that all slaves were freed on June 19 that Black people in Texas learned about the emancipation.
Texas recognized Juneteenth as an official state holiday in 1980. Last year, President Joe Biden signed a law making Juneteenth a federal holiday, following decades of advocacy by Lee and others around the country.
Juneteenth 2024 will commemorate 159 years since enslaved people in Galveston learned of their freedom.
How do I learn more about Black history in Dallas?
After they were freed, some formerly enslaved people formed freedmen’s towns, historic communities founded across the South from 1865 to 1930, according to the Texas State Historical Association. These communities are also called freedom colonies or Black settlements. In Dallas, freedmen’s towns include Joppa, Elm Thicket-Northpark and the Tenth Street area in Oak Cliff. Recognition for those areas is still a work in progress.
Julieta Chiquillo wrote in a 2018 article about two black genealogists in Dallas who have spent decades unearthing the history of their families dating back centuries — and they did the bulk of their work before genealogy websites and DNA kits became a cultural phenomenon.
Opal Lee’s Legacy
The Fort Worth native started advocating for federal recognition of Juneteenth when she was 86, almost 10 years before her mission was completed. She spent decades working as a community advocate for Black Texans before her historical walk from Fort Worth to Washington D.C. in 2016, when she walked two-and-a half miles a day to represent the two-and-a-half years it took the news of the Emancipation Proclamation to reach Texas.
A national Juneteenth museum is planned to be built in Lee’s hometown.
Lee spoke to the Dallas Morning News in April to share her life’s story and many lessons after she was named the Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year in 2021. You can listen to the podcast here.
How is Juneteenth remembered today?
While celebrations of the holiday have been held in dozens of states for decades, Juneteenth has reached all corners of the country in the past few years.
Author Joyce King sees the historical holiday is an opportunity for education as well as celebration. She wrote, “Passage is not an ending; it is a provocative new beginning.” She said that “Texas is at a major crossroads” and an example for the nation to see how the state and its people celebrate the holiday. Read her essay on the future of Juneteenth’s impact.
Is this just about the legacy of slavery?
It’s more than that, Joyce King wrote in 2017: The history of how Black people celebrated that day, now known as Juneteenth, is part of the story of Texas and also the story of how Texas influences the rest of the country. Juneteenth celebrations abound in the U.S., commemorating freedom and offering us a way to talk about slavery.
