Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration which commemorates the end of the

American period of enslavement.

During the Civil War, (April 12, 1861 – April 9, 1865), President Abraham Lincoln issued

the Emancipation Proclamation ostensibly freeing all slaves on September 22, 1862,

with an effective implementation date of January 1, 1863.

As the war progressed, defeated southerners from slave states left the embattled areas

and took their enslaved with them. A number of them settled in Texas (the farthest state

west of the Confederacy) and resumed the practice of free-slave labor.

On June 19, 1865, Commander of the Third Calvary Brigade, Major General Gordon

Granger, speaking from his headquarters in the Osterman Building in Galveston, Texas,

read General Order #3 to the crowd which had gathered outside. The order advised

that the war had ended, and all enslaved persons had been set free in 1863, some two

and one-half years earlier.

Today’s Juneteenth celebrations allow for reflection on how far we have come in the

quest for equity as well as how far we have to go.

Juneteenth further serves as a reminder of the need to continually make our voices

heard and our desires known. We declare we are the inheritors of a tradition of a

centuries long struggle against injustice. No attempt to write us out of history, no amount

of intimidation, harassment or imposed victimization will stop us from uncovering and

telling the factual truth of who we were, who we are and how these findings impact who

we state we desire to become as a people and as a nation.