06/19/2026
Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, marks the date in 1865 when Union soldiers showed up in Galveston, Texas, to announce that the Civil War had ended and that all enslaved people were free.
It took over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863.
It took until Dec 6, 1865 to ratify the 13th Amendment to officially abolish slavery nationwide. Following that, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 granted all native-born Americans their citizenship rights, but would take 2 more Amendments (14th & 15th) before voting rights would be established.
The fight wasn't over, over 160 years later we saw the Jim Crow laws put in place to segregate Black Americans and make it nearly impossible to exercise their newly won rights.
Today is a day we remember as the day slavery was struck down in all territories of the United States, but remember that Freedom is a continuous exercise of human rights.
