Juneteenth: The Long Road from Galveston to Federal Holiday

On June 19, 1865, Union Army General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and read aloud General Order Number Three—informing enslaved people that they were free. The Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect two and a half years earlier. The Confederacy had surrendered two months prior. The delay, as historians and community advocates in Galveston note, came down to the simple, brutal reality of geography and the slow reach of information into the state of Texas.

That moment in Galveston is now the subject of And Still We Rise, a Juneteenth exhibit housed at the Aston Villa House. When Juneteenth was designated a federal holiday in 2021—after the Senate passed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act unanimously and President Joe Biden signed it into law—the phones at the exhibit didn't stop ringing. The question callers kept asking was the same one: what is Juneteenth?

The answer has deep roots. African Americans have marked June 19th since 1866. Texas made it an official state holiday in 1980. But national recognition took another 41 years, driven in significant part by advocates including Reverend Doctor Ronald Z. Meyers and Opal Lee, a Texas native who stood beside President Biden at the signing ceremony. "Never in a million years would I think I'd go to the White House," Lee reflected.

For Tommy Boudreaux, the holiday carries both pride and an unresolved weight. He points to the final lines of General Order Number Three itself—the very document that announced freedom—which referenced "absolute equality," a promise he and others say has never been fully honored. "African Americans are not asking for any more than what they were promised," he said. "Juneteenth was the beginning of something that still hasn't ended."

It took 115 years for Texas to formally recognize the date. It took 156 years for the nation to do the same. Boudreaux's message to those grappling with that history is direct: "No one's asking anybody to be guilty. Just make an effort—a strong effort—to accept it. Promises were made and we never received them. Not all of them."