Happy Juneteenth
Until recently, many white people (myself included) have either been completely unaware of Juneteenth, or weren’t quite clear what it was about. It’s an unofficial holiday to commemorate the day General Gordon Granger declared all slaves in Texas free on June 19th, 1865. The Civil War had been over a couple of months by that point, but it took a while for Union forces to get to Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. (Slavery wouldn’t officially be abolished until the ratification of the 13th Amendment in December of that year.)
Juneteenth has been an important day in Black communities for generations, but the end of slavery is something we should all celebrate.