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Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States.
Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation – which had become official January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.
Later attempts to explain this two and a half year delay in the receipt of this important news have yielded several versions that have been handed down through the years. Often told is the story of a messenger who was murdered on his way to Texas with the news of freedom. Another, is that the news was deliberately withheld by the enslavers to maintain the labor force on the plantations. And still another, is that federal troops actually waited for the slave owners to reap the benefits of one last cotton harvest before going to Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. All of which, or neither of these version could be true. Certainly, for some, President Lincoln’s authority over the rebellious states was in question For whatever the reasons, conditions in Texas remained status quo well beyond what was statutory.
From Constitutional Law Blog: “In his article Apology Lite: Truths, Doubts, and Reconciliations in the Senate’s Guarded Apology for Slavery, 42 Connecticut Law Review CONNtemplations 1 (2009), available on ssrn, LawProf Kaimipono David Wegner argues that the United States Senate should “formally commemorate Juneteenth” to help show the sincerity of its apology for slavery and further restorative justice goals including reparations.” (h/t CUNY Law Professor Ruthann Robson)
As a result of a loophole in the 13th Amendment (“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”), plantation labor was transformed into prison farms and convict leased labor, fueling the prison industrial complex — a behemoth that perpetuates institutionalized racism and [what Michelle Alexander refers to as] the New Jim Crow. The United States has 25% of the world’s prison inmate population, although it has only 5% of the world’s population.
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