In 2021, the United States Congress declared the first federal holiday in almost 40 years,

Juneteenth.

Juneteenth honors and celebrates the emancipation of slaves in the United States, but why do we celebrate

it on this day and how did this holiday come about?

When exactly did slavery end in the United States and how do other countries celebrate the

abolition of slavery?

Learn more about Juneteenth, aka Emancipation Day, on this abolition of

this this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. In order to answer the question of why Juneteenth is celebrated on June 19th,

we should first address the issue of when exactly slavery ended.

The institution of African slavery in the Western Hemisphere

started in the early 16th century when enslaved Africans were brought

to the Americas by the Spanish. The institution of African slavery dramatically

grew through the 18th century all throughout the British

Spanish and Portuguese colonies. For centuries slavery was pretty much legal

everywhere in the Americas even if the practice of it was mostly concentrated in several agricultural

regions.

Ending slavery was a process that took almost a century before it was fully extinguished in the

Western Hemisphere.

The first place to end slavery was the independent Republic of Vermont in 1777, which freed

men over the age of 21 and women over the age of 18.

However, it was weakly enforced and it didn't free everyone. In 1780, Pennsylvania

freed the children of all slaves, but didn't free slaves themselves, and the

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