NBC NEWS, June 18, 2020 — Juneteenth, the commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States, will be celebrated by Black Americans this Friday amid a national reckoning on race prompted by the police killing of George Floyd and the sweeping demonstrations that followed.
As hundreds of thousands have protested nationwide and calls for police reform and for an examination of the nation’s history of racial inequality have grown — including rising pressure to take down Confederate statues — some have said that June 19 should be recognized as a national holiday.
President Donald Trump was criticized recently for deciding to hold a public rally on Friday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, site of one of the worst outbreaks of racial violence in American history, in 1921, when a racist white mob killed hundreds of Black residents. Trump later changed the rally to Saturday, June 20.
As June 19 approaches, here’s what you need to know about the holiday.
What is Juneteenth?
On June 19, 1865, Gen. Gordon Granger arrived with Union soldiers in Galveston, Texas, and announced to enslaved Africans Americans that the Civil War had ended and they were free — more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
At the time Lincoln issued the proclamation, there were minimal Union troops in Texas to enforce it, according to Juneteenth.com. But with the surrender of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee two months earlier and the arrival of Granger’s troops, the Union forces were now strong enough to enforce the proclamation.
The holiday, which gets its named from the combination of June and Nineteenth, is also known as Emancipation Day, Juneteenth Independence Day and Black Independence Day.
“Juneteenth has always been particularly special for African Americans,” said Julian Hayter, a historian and an associate professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia. “It’s this critical inflection point in the Black freedom struggle.”
