Commemorating Juneteenth: Home

Juneteenth, which is also called Emancipation Day or Juneteenth Independence Day, commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. The holiday is celebrated every year on June 19. To learn more about the history of Juneteenth read through the reference sources on this page and click on the tabs at the top for more information and resources.
Note, below, that the US Senate has just passed the "Juneteenth National Independence Day" legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.

June 19 marks the celebration of the holiday known as Juneteenth and few places will celebrate with more gusto than Galveston, Texas, where it all began.

The history of this celebration begins on January 1, 1863, when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, outlawing slavery in the states that had seceded and immediately freeing about 50,000 enslaved African Americans. According to the tradition of Juneteenth, news of the proclamation didn’t reach some enslaved people in Texas for another two and a half years.

The anniversary of an 1865 announcement by a Union military official in Texas has grown over the years into a celebration of emancipation - the end of slavery in the United States.In the Congressional Research Service’s recent guide to the Juneteenth holiday, the service says that unofficial Juneteenth celebrations started in Texas’s African-American community the following year. “Texans celebrated [the Juneteenth anniversary] beginning in 1866, with community-centric events, such as parades, cookouts, prayer gatherings, historical and cultural readings, and musical performances,” the CRS recounts.

Over time, the Juneteenth holiday was celebrated outside of Texas in the South and other parts of the country. A 1949 reference in the journal American Speech indicated that Juneteenth was the day African-Americans “in the South commemorate the freedom of their race from slavery.”

Presented by Dr. Shennette Garrett-Scott Wednesday, June 19, 2013 at the Allen (TX) Public Library. Her program traces the history of Juneteenth events from the late nineteenth century freedmen colonys'' and settlements' celebrations to the present community events.

Juneteenth National Independence Day will become the 12th legal public holiday, including Inauguration Day, and the first new one created since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was signed into law in 1983 by then-President Ronald Reagan.

Juneteenth in New Jersey in 2021
In September 2020, New Jersey's Governor Phil Murphy has signed legislation (S19), which designates the third Friday in June as a State and public holiday, known as Juneteenth Day.