The Real History of Juneteenth and the Reason It’s a Federal Holiday

“Freedom Day” Has Nothing to Do With Freedom

The premise of the Juneteenth holiday is to celebrate the date when enslaved people in Texas were informed of their freedom. On June 19, 1865, seventy-one days after the Civil War ended, Major General Gordon Granger rolled into Galveston, TX, with his army and announced that slavery was over. His announcement wasn’t based on the South losing the war but the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed Texas enslaved people, provided they made their way to a free state or territory. Granger was really telling the slaves that Abraham Lincoln had freed them two and a half years earlier.

“The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages.”

Juneteenth is being promoted as “Freedom Day.” But there’s a hitch: nobody was freed on Freedom Day; enslaved people were literally told to go back to their plantations and hope to extract wages from their former enslavers. Don’t come to the army bases or seek help from the government. Slaves were told to proceed quietly, the …