Juneteenth: The 157-year-old holiday's history explained

On Monday, stock markets and non-essential federal offices will close in recognition of the country's newest federal holiday: Juneteenth.

Last year, President Joe Biden signed a bill that officially designated the 157-year-old holiday — which celebrates the emancipation of African-Americans from slavery in the U.S. — a federal holiday. "Great nations don't ignore their most painful moments," Biden said at the White House ceremony celebrating the bill's signing in June 2021. "They embrace them."

Juneteenth, celebrated annually on June 19, has gained prominence in recent years, particularly as leaders and companies across the United States launched efforts to support Black people and culture following the widespread protests against systemic racism and police brutality in 2020. Before it became a federal holiday, businesses like Twitter, Square, Nike and the the National Football League had already announced that they would recognize Juneteenth as a paid company holiday.

This year, June 19 falls on a Sunday, which means the holiday will be observed on Monday, June 20. Some large chains, like Target and Starbucks, also recognize Juneteenth as an official company holiday: Most stores will remain open, but hourly workers could have the opportunity to earn time-and-a-half overtime pay.

So what is Juneteenth and why is it important? Here's what you need to know. 

Juneteenth is a 157-year-old holiday celebrating the emancipation of African-Americans from slavery in the U.S. It honors June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger of the Union Army landed in Galveston, Texas, and informed slaves that the Civil War had ended and slavery had been abolished.

Granger and roughly 2,000 Union soldiers were there to enforce President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which had actually gone into effect more than two years earlier, on January 1, 1863. (Lincoln himself had been assassinated just a few months earlier, in April 1865.)

Granger publicly read General Order No. 3, which stated: "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free." The more than 250,000 slaves in Texas were shocked to hear the years-old news, according to the National Museum of African American History & Culture.

There are varying accounts of why it took so long for the news of slavery's abolition to reach Texas, with one story claiming that a messenger bearing the news was murdered on his way there. Many historians note that Texas remained a Confederate state until 1865, when Robert E. Lee finally surrendered to the Union Army, and the state would therefore not have enforced Lincoln's proclamation until the Union took control.

Historians also report that many slave owners in Texas intentionally withheld information about the Emancipation Proclamation from slaves before 1865 in order to keep their labor force intact. 

Regardless, Granger's arrival and the news that slavery had been abolished by the federal government kicked off widespread celebrations across the state. 

In the book, "Lone Star Pasts: Memory and History in Texas," a former slave named Felix Haywood recalled the first celebrations on June 19, 1865: "We was all walkin' on golden clouds ... Everybody went wild ... We was free. Just like that we was free."

Juneteenth is "the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States," according to Juneteenth.com. It's also both a day of remembrance and an opportunity for African-Americans to honor their history and celebrate Black culture.

African-American historian and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. writes that, over generations, Juneteenth became: "an occasion for gathering lost family members, measuring progress against freedom and inculcating rising generations with the values of self-improvement and racial uplift. This was accomplished through readings of the Emancipation Proclamation, religious sermons and spirituals, the preservation of slave food delicacies (always at the center: the almighty barbecue pit), as well as the incorporation of new games and traditions, from baseball to rodeos and, later, stock car races and overhead flights."

In 1866, freed slaves in Texas marked June 19 with anniversary celebrations that included prayer services and church gatherings in the Black community.

Over subsequent years, former slaves and their families continued celebrating their freedom with annual Juneteenth celebrations that also featured former slaves delivering inspirational speeches and reading from the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a day for "grass-roots celebration highlighted by joyous singing, pig roasts, and rodeos," according to Smithsonian Magazine.

In a 2007 essay titled "Juneteenth: Emancipation and Memory," historian Elizabeth Hayes Turner wrote about former slaves and their descendants who continued celebrating the Juneteenth holiday for generations after 1865.

One descendant of slaves recounted in that essay how Juneteenth celebrations sometimes included homemade pyrotechnics: "'My daddy told me that they whooped and hollered and bored holes in trees with augers and stopped it up with [gun] powder and light and that would be their blast for the celebration.'"

In 1872, a group of former Texas slaves collected more than $800 to buy 10 acres of open land, near what is now Houston, to use for annual Juneteenth celebrations. They named the parcel Emancipation Park, and it remains the oldest public park in the state. 

As newly-freed Texas slaves began resettling across the country, as part of The Great Migration of former slaves, the tradition of Juneteenth celebrations also spread to new locales across the South and the rest of the U.S. over the next century.

However, especially during the post-Civil War Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras, former Confederate states had little inclination to recognize Juneteenth, according to Smithsonian Magazine. As such, the "grass-roots" aspect of Juneteenth celebrations was often the norm well into the 20th Century, which contributed to the Juneteenth holiday regularly going unnoticed by Americans outside of the Black community.

Until very recently, it was still rarely mentioned in school curricula. As a result, "this monumental event remains largely unknown to most Americans," the National Museum of African American History & Culture noted in 2019.

In 1938, Texas designated a day of observance for Juneteenth celebrations, called Emancipation Day, two years after up to 200,000 people turned out for Juneteenth celebrations in Dallas. Still, Juneteenth did not become an official state holiday in Texas until 1980.

Juneteenth celebrations began to see a broader resurgence among the Black community in the middle of the 20th Century, especially amid the civil rights movement.

"The Black Power movement, in particular, with its emphasis on pride, culture, identity, and re-claiming history, helped spark a renewed interest in Juneteenth," Anthony Greene, an associate professor of African American Studies at the College of Charleston, said in a 2018 interview. "Additionally, as Black Studies (African American Studies) programs have developed on college campuses, accurate Black historical narratives have emerged, also helping to generate more interest in celebrations such as Juneteenth."

Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump both issued statements of observance for the Juneteenth holiday during their times in office, but efforts to make Juneteenth an official federal holiday fell short in Congress until 2021.

"Making Juneteenth a federal holiday is a major step forward to recognize the wrongs of the past," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, after the U.S. Senate passed the bill to make Juneteenth a national holiday last year.

Prior to June 2021, 48 states and the District of Columbia had already passed legislation recognizing Juneteenth as either a state holiday or day of observance. Today, it's all 50 states: Hawaii officially recognized the holiday when Biden signed the June 2021 bill, and South Dakota followed suit in 2022.

Today's celebrations still often feature some mix of religious services, storytelling and jubilant celebrations of Black culture featuring food, music and parades. Historians often point out that barbecue has always been a focal point of the holiday, with Texas newspaper articles from the late-1800s reporting that "the preparation and sharing of food was the main attraction" at many a Juneteenth celebration.

A 2015 Texas Monthly article about the historical connection between the food and Juneteenth advised that the best way to celebrate "this thoroughly Texas-rooted holiday, [is to] do it with some barbecue."

Another common culinary sight at Juneteenth celebrations is red-colored food and drink — "the crimson a symbol of ingenuity and resilience in bondage," according to The New York Times — like red punch and red velvet cake. Food historians have also said the red foods could have been influenced by the fact that the color red signifies strength in some West African cultures. 

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