Abolitionist Frederick Douglass asked in a famous speech in 1852: ‘What to the American slave is your Fourth of July?’ For formerly enslaved persons, Juneteenth, celebrated in the US today, was their freedom story. Today, it’s commemorated by their descendants and an entire nation.
Last year, Joe Biden signed a law designating 19 June (Juneteenth, for short) as a federal holiday.
In 1865, two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing enslaved persons in the Confederates states, Union major general Gordon Granger landed in Galveston, Texas, and delivered the news. Since then, Black Texans, including Opal Lee, called the ‘Grandmother of Juneteenth’, have commemorated the day with parades, picnics and speeches.
As Black people migrated across the country, they carried Juneteenth with them, helping to turn an event once recognized only in Black communities into a national holiday.
Here’s a look at the celebrations over time.
Main image: Composite: Getty
Sun 19 Jun 2022 11.00 BST Last modified on Tue 21 Jun 2022 17.35 BST
An African American band at the Emancipation Day Juneteenth Celebration at ‘East Woods’ on East 24th Street, 19 June 1900. Grace Stephenson kept a diary on the day’s events, which she later sold to the San Francisco Chronicle, which wrote a full-page feature on it
Rebekah Johnson, the 2008 Miss Juneteenth, rides down 26th Avenue on the back of a convertible during a Juneteenth parade in Denver, Colorado, in 2012.
Photograph: Kathryn Scott Osler/Denver Post/Getty Images
