By TaRessa Stovall and Stacey Patton

The ending of U.S. slavery was as complicated as the institution itself.

Though President Abraham Lincoln officially issued the Emancipation Proclamation decreeing that as of New Year’s Day, 1863, slaves in southern states would be freed, not everyone felt bound by that executive order.

According to a June 15 article in the Corsicana Daily Sun in Texas, “Since states of the Confederacy did not regard Lincoln as having any authority over them, the Proclamation had little impact on actually freeing slaves.”

WikiAnswers.com said that, “The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in most Southern states. It didn’t free slaves in the border states of Kentucky Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia, or in southern states under Union control. The Emancipation Proclamation announced the end of slavery in the South. But since the South broke away from the United States, slavery didn’t end until the country was back together again.

The 15 slave states at the time of the Civil War were Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia (including West Virginia, which hadn’t separated from Virginia at that time). (The District of Columbia also had slavery until April 16, 1862.) Though not states, slavery was practiced in the Nebraska Territory and in the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) as early as the 1850s.

At the beginning of the Civil War, the 19 free states were as follows: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Iowa, Oregon and California. In New Jersey, there were still slaves at the time of the Civil War. New Jersey law called for the gradual emancipation of slaves, and by the time of the Civil War, most, but not all, slaves in that state had been freed.

Two-and-a-half years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Gordon Granger was named commander of the Department of Texas. One of his first acts was to officially declare that slavery was over. Finished. Abolished. Granger traveled throughout the state to personally spread the good news, in the form of General Order Number 3, which began with:

“The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer.”

Having delivered this news, Granger then encouraged the newly-emancipated blacks to work out labor contracts for payment from their former owners, and to await guidance from the new Freedmen’s Bureau, which was created to help them make the transition to freedom.

This made June 19, 1865, the day that freedom actually came to Texas. Fittingly, African-Americans there coined the clever “Juneteenth,” and celebrated that date rather than January 1, the date of Lincoln’s original announcement.

While we found no official accounts to explain the mysterious gap in ending slavery, “The History of Juneteenth” on Juneteenth.com said, “The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce [Lincoln's] new Executive Order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.

“Later attempts to explain this two-and-a-half year delay in the receipt of this important news have yielded several versions that have been handed down through the years. Often told is the story of a messenger who was murdered on his way to Texas with the news of freedom. Another is that the news was deliberately withheld by the enslavers to maintain the labor force on the plantations. And still another is that federal troops actually waited for the slave owners to reap the benefits of one last cotton harvest before going to Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation.”

Cause for Celebration

Juneteenth was first celebrated as a Texas holiday in 1867. African Americans there pooled their resources and raised funds to purchase property to be used for Juneteenth celebrations, including the 10-acre Emancipation Park in Houston, and a 20-acre site near Lake Mexica in Limestone County.

The celebration of Juneteenth has spread beyond Texas to states across the nation, with rodeos, fishing, baseball, barbecues, along with an emphasis on education and self-improvement. Some involve special guest speakers and prayer services, and elder members of the community are sometimes called to share their memories. Strawberry soda is often associated with the holiday.

History books and classroom texts reported Lincoln’s January 1, 1863 Emancipation Proclamation as the end of slavery, with few if any reference to General Granger’s contribution in 1865. During the Great Depression, many black people had to leave their farms and migrate to urban areas to find work, and employers there were less likely to give the workers a weekday off to celebrate Juneteenth. Growing patriotism put more of a focus on July 4 celebrations.

During the civil rights and black power movements of the 1960s, some student demonstrators in Atlanta sported Juneteenth freedom buttons. During the Poor Peoples March to Washington D.C. in 1968, many African Americans went back to their homes committed to raising awareness of Juneteenth and starting celebrations where there hadn’t been any. According to Juneteenth.com, Minneapolis and Milwaukee have two of the largest Juneteenth celebrations in the U.S.

Juneteenth became an official state holiday in Texas on January 1, 1980, when Al Edwards, an African-American state legislator led the passage of this first celebration to gain official state recognition.

Interest in Juneteenth and related celebrations is still growing throughout the U.S. In 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama was a leading sponsor of Juneteenth legislation in the Senate. As president, he said that this year’s holiday carries “even more significance” because of the Thursday, June 18 resolution apologizing for “the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery,” and the institutionalized segregation and racism popularly referred to as “Jim Crow.”

President George W. Bush, though urged by Congress to recognize Juneteenth Independence with a special Presidential Proclamation, was noted by Juneteenth leaders and supporters for not acknowledging or commenting on the holiday.

Maybe it’s a Texas thing?

TaRessa Stovall is Managing Editor of TheDefendersOnline and Web Content Manger for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

Stacey Patton is Senior Editor of TheDefendesrOnline and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.