A lot of people have events celebrating Juneteenth but many don’t know what exactly Juneteenth is. Juneteenth is the celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Even though President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves became law on January 1, 1863,it wasn’t until June 19th, 1865 when General Gordon Granger entered Galveston and announced that all of Texas’s slaves were free. The slave responded by holding celebrations all over Texas. Historians have theories as to why the news was delivered to Texas 2 years late. Some say that a courier, on his way to Texas to spread the news of the Emancipation Proclamation, was killed before he could deliver the news, while another theory is that Texas slave owners wanted to plant one more cotton crop and so they delayed freeing their slaves. Learn more here and come out Saturday, June 21st downtown Durham as we celebrate Juneteenth.
