What is Juneteenth?

That announcement came about two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863. The proclamation was partly a military strategy. It declared enslaved people in the Confederate states free, but it could only be enforced where Union troops were present. Texas had more than 250,000 enslaved people at the time, and enslavers there had little reason to listen to the North.

On that day, Union general Gordon Granger read General Order No. 3, telling the people of Texas that all enslaved people were free. Freed people began celebrating the date the next year with church gatherings, picnics and readings of the proclamation. Some communities pooled money to buy land for the celebrations, like Emancipation Park in Houston. In 1980, Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth a holiday.

It took decades of organizing to make it national, and activists like Opal Lee, who was in her 90s, walked and petitioned for years to win federal recognition. President Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act on June 17, 2021. It was the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

But Juneteenth didn't end slavery everywhere. The 13th Amendment did that in December 1865, except "as a punishment for crime" (National Archives). That exception still shapes how prison labor works today. And freedom didn't bring equal rights to vote, go to school, own land or marry who you chose. So a paid day off is a start. What we need is the action that follows it.