Why Juneteenth is a holiday every American should celebrate.

This is Dr. Jim Denison's The Daily Article podcast for Wednesday, June 19th, 2019.

Today is Juneteenth.

The less you know about this holiday, the more you need to know.

On June 19th, 1865, two months after the Confederacy

surrendered, Union General Gordon Granger led a group of federal troops into Galveston, Texas.

Major General Granger issued this declaration. 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 personal

rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves. And the connection heretofore

existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.

As Henry Lewis-Gates Jr. notes, Major General Granger had no idea that his order would

establish the most popular annual celebration in the United States of emancipation from slavery.

The newly freed black men and women of Texas made the date into their own annual right,

beginning one year later in 1866.

Informal celebrations of the date continued until in 1980, Texas became the first state

to make Juneteenth an official holiday.

45 states recognized the holiday today.

President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, but it freed only slaves within Confederate states who were liberated by Union troops.

Even after Granger's proclamation, many of the 250,000 slaves in Texas were

mistreated for decades to come. African Americans would wait nearly 100 years before the Civil

Rights Act of 1964 ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination

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