Juneteenth
6/20/202610 min
June 19, 2026
The federal holiday honoring Juneteenth celebrates the announcement on June 19, 1865 letting Texans know that enslaved Americans were free, The federal government would see to it that going forward white people and Black people would be equal, While white legislators in the former Confederacy grudgingly ratified the 13th amendment abolishing enslavement, they also passed laws keeping freedpeople subservient to their white neighbors, Black codes restricted the rights of Black Americans, When Congress refused to readmit states with Black Codes in place, the 13th amendment was added to the Constitution, And in 1866 the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was passed, establishing that no state could discriminate against any of its citizens or take away any of their rights, The federal government encouraged Juneteenth celebrations, which began to spread to Black communities across the nation, While these celebrations declined during the Jim Crow years, after WWII, Black Americans brought the celebrations with them across the US, and in 2021 President Biden signed a measure to create a federal Juneteenth holiday, Pressure from those determined to preserve a government that protects the wealthy and white men today threatens the new nation that Juneteenth celebrated—one that would honor the equality of all Americans.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsHeather Cox Richardson0:00
[theme music] June 19th, 2026. Today is the federal holiday honoring Juneteenth, the celebration of the announcement in Texas on June nineteenth, eighteen sixty-five that enslaved Americans were free. That announcement came as late as it did because while General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant of the US Army on April ninth, eighteen sixty-five, it was not until June second that General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department, the last major army of the Confederacy, to the United States in Galveston, Texas. Smith then fled to Mexico. Seventeen days later, Major General Gordon Granger of the US Army arrived to take charge of the soldiers stationed in Texas. On that day, June nineteenth, he issued General Order Number Three. It read: The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them