The History of Juneteenth

Fitting for a man who hailed from a New York town called Joy, grave-faced General Gordon
Granger issued General Order No. 3 in Galveston on June 19, 1865, and initiated a celebration
that continues to this day.

"The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of
the United States, all slaves are free," Granger declared.

More than two years had passed since the Emancipation Proclamation, and two months since
General Robert E. Lee surrendered. President Abraham Lincoln had been dead two months.
The Army of the Trans-Mississippi had surrendered just a few weeks earlier.

So news of freedom moved slowly, but the response by some of the quarter-million enslaved
people in Texas to the arrival of Granger and 1,800 Union troops was that of joy loosened.
Though even then, it loosened such that word would not spread quickly. Some plantation
masters waited to deliver the news. Some waited for enforcement to take any action. But one
year later, that date, "Juneteenth," became a point of celebration that has in the 150 years since
marked the end of something and the beginning of something.

The lag between the Proclamation and General Order No. 3 speaks to Texas' unique space in
the Civil War.

The first 10 years of Texas' statehood saw the peculiar institution become a formidable
institution under the same justification as other states: economic necessity. An estimated 5,000
enslaved men and women were in the state in 1836, and six times as many a decade later. By
1861, the number had veered upward past 200,000. Some were captive in Houston and
Galveston, though the majority were held in rural areas where cotton grew.

The starting point for slavery was later in this region, though, because Mexico abolished it in
1829. Six years and one revolution later, the Constitution of the Republic of Texas opened up
business again for the practice, which quickly grew.

Sam Houston was governor in 1861 and opposed to violent conflict between the states, which
he envisioned as spelling certain doom for the South. He oversaw the state's secession in
February 1861, but refused to take an oath to the Confederate States of America the following
month. This spelled his ouster: Houston was replaced in March 1861 by the lieutenant governor
and Texas joined the Confederacy.

When war broke out between the states, Texas didn't have federal troops breach its border and
into its interior until the war was declared over. Which isn't to say Houston — the city — had no
part in the war itself.
Homegrown military companies flourished in the years after the Texas Revolution ended. By
1861, members of the Washington Light Guards, which transformed into the Bayou City Guards,
and the Milam Rifles were leaving Texas for combat to the east.

A tough Kentuckian who later settled in Texas, John Bell Hood resigned his commission with
the U.S. military in April 1861 and quickly shot up the ranks in the Confederate Army after
distinguishing himself in several major battles. He briefly led a brigade in Robert E. Lee's Army
of Northern Virginia that came to take on his name — Hood's Brigade — which included the
greatest concentration of Texas troops who fought in the Eastern Theater. Hood lost use of one
arm at Gettysburg and later lost a leg at Chickamauga, which ended his leadership of that
brigade.

He planned to resume his service back in Texas when the Confederacy came unraveled. That
collapse occurred while General Edmund Kirby Smith sat in Houston in command of a quickly
disintegrating Army of the Trans-Mississippi (soldiers from Texas, Arkansas and parts of
Louisiana). Confederate forces in Texas had been cut off from the east when Union naval forces
took control of the Mississippi River. Morale deteriorated as news of the war's impending end
traveled from the east to the west.

Hood and Smith surrendered about the same time in late May and early June 1865. Hood
surrendered in Natchez, and Smith in Galveston. Smith promptly fled the country.

Days later, on June 10, General Granger was placed in command of the U.S. Army's
Department of Texas. He set up headquarters in Galveston and made the famed proclamation
on June 19. He nullified Confederate laws, released Confederate soldiers and confiscated
property like cotton as compensation. Granger urged freed men to continue working on
plantations, but only after signing labor agreements.

While there was celebration on June 19, 1865, there were also acts of violence against freed
men and women. But a year passed, and the day became a point of celebration, particularly to
freed slaves who found hypocrisy in the celebration of July 4, which marked dubious equality
nearly 90 years earlier.

Juneteenth stuck around as an annual day of

celebration. Awareness of the day would wane at
times over the years, though it began to rise again
during the Civil Rights era of the 1900s. Texas
formalized the day in 1980, recognizing Juneteenth as
an official state holiday.

Galveston and Houston, naturally, have long-running

traditions with celebrations involving live music and
food. But ripples from those celebrations have moved
further away: Los Angeles and New York both host Juneteenth celebrations. Last year, La
Crosse, Wisconsin hosted its first-ever Juneteenth event.

Juneteenth.com describes it as "a worldwide celebration," using an event 151 years ago in
Galveston as a flash point for freedom.