What is Juneteenth?

Juneteenth is a celebration of the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States, specifically commemorating June 19, 1865, the day Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas with about 2,000 Union soldiers and issued General Order No. 3, announcing that all enslaved people in Texas were free. Texas had been the most remote of the Confederate states, and slavery there had continued largely unaffected by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, which freed enslaved people in Confederate-held territory but could not be enforced where Union armies had not yet reached. Granger's order, read aloud in Galveston, declared that the people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.

By the time of the announcement, the Confederacy had collapsed (Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox on April 9, 1865), the war was effectively over, and Lincoln had been assassinated (April 14, 1865). The Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery throughout the United States, was ratified on December 6, 1865, six months after Juneteenth.

Juneteenth (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth) was first observed in Texas the following year, in 1866, with church services, prayer meetings, family gatherings, picnics, parades, music, and the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. Black Texans carried the tradition with them as they migrated to other parts of the country during the Great Migration (1910 to 1970), and the holiday spread to other states. Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth an official state holiday on January 1, 1980. Other states followed through the 1990s and 2000s.

Following the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 and the protests that followed, public attention to Juneteenth grew sharply. Congress passed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, and President Joe Biden signed it as Public Law 117-17 on June 17, 2021, making Juneteenth (June 19) the eleventh federal public holiday and the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983. The holiday is codified at 5 U.S.C. section 6103. When June 19 falls on a Saturday, federal observance shifts to Friday, June 18; when it falls on a Sunday, observance shifts to Monday, June 20.

Customary observances include parades, festivals, family meals (often featuring foods of the African American South), readings of the Emancipation Proclamation and General Order No. 3, music and dance, and educational programs about slavery and emancipation.