How Did Juneteenth Get Started?

Juneteenth is a holiday celebrating Black American independence and commemorating the ongoing struggle for equality. Learn the history of Juneteenth in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren vocal Bam here. Every year on June nineteen, millions
of people across America come together to celebrate Juneteenth with
parties and parades, prayer, breakfasts, and golf tournaments, cookouts and music.
The holiday is now officially recognized in forty seven states

(00:23):
plus Washington, d C. Though it hasn't been made a
national holiday yet despite having been around for more than
a hundred and fifty years. We spoke with Paula Austin,
a professor of African American studies and history at Boston University.
She said, you'd be surprised. There are many students who
get to my class and they sort of never learned
about the history of enslavement. They've never learned about the

(00:44):
Civil rights movement. I think they've had students who, because
of where they're from or their families, know about Juneteenth
and have actually participated in the celebrations. But most students
come and they don't know. But let's go back to
the beginning. On June eighteen sixty five, more than two
months after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses

(01:05):
S grant at apematics, which all but ended the Civil War.
A U. S. Army officer by the name of Major
General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas with two momentous announcements,
the end of the Civil War and with it, the
end of slavery. Nobody is quite sure why it took
so long for the news of emancipation to reach Texas.

(01:27):
Several stories have been told throughout the years, though none
has ever been confirmed, including one of an earlier messenger
who was killed on his way to Texas to tell
the news of freedom. Others believe that some enslavers knew
the truth but simply continued going about business as usual.
The most likely is simply that there were not enough
troops to enforce the emancipation Proclamation, whether enslaved people knew

(01:48):
about it or not, so things remained status quo, that
is until Major General Granger showed up. After Granger's announcement,
some of the two hundred and fifty thousand people in
Texas immediately left for the promise of true freedom in
the North, while others traveled to rejoin family members. One
formerly enslaved person, Molly Harrold, said in the slave narratives

(02:11):
of Texas. We all walked down the road, singing and
shouting to beat the band. Others stayed defined, paying work
in the fields and elsewhere. That day marks what is
now often called Black Independence Day or the Black fourth
of July. It's the American celebration of freedom from slavery.
Juneteenth was first observed in Texas in eighteen sixty six.

(02:34):
It wasn't officially recognized as a holiday in any state
until Texas did so in nineteen seventy nine. Since then,
only North Dakota, South Dakota, and Hawaii have yet to
declare it a holiday. In recent years, both the U. S.
House of Representatives and the U. S. Senate have formally
recognized June nineteenth as Juneteenth Independence Day. Various movements to

(02:56):
grant the day status as a national holiday are ongoing.
U S. Senator Corey Booker said in twenty eighteen, on
this day, we must confront the ugly parts of our
history and honor the slaves who suffered and died under
a repressive regime. We must also pay tribute to all
those who had the strength and conviction to fight to
end slavery and keep our union together. Juneteenth Independence Day

(03:20):
is also an important moment to recognize how far we've
come and take note of how far we have yet
to go. Certainly, during the original Juneteenth, there was still
a lot of work to be done. It came just
months after the Civil War ended and two years after
the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln. The
Thirteenth Amendment to the U. S Constitution, which abolished slavery,

(03:42):
had been passed by Congress and was well on its
way to being ratified by the States, but the fourteenth
and fifteenth guaranteeing equal protection and the right to vote
to all citizens regardless of skin color, were still a
couple of years off, and not all enslaved people in
Texas were immediately freed. Some held by defiant plantation owners
were not emancipated until much later. Some formerly enslaved people

(04:05):
who tried to leave, historical reports show, were tracked down
and killed. Many more stepped into a future of poverty, fear,
and uncertainty. Austin suggests that many Americans ignorance about Juneteenth
stems from a disinclination to completely face the country's past
with slavery, and it's far reaching and continuing aftermath. Still

(04:27):
Juneteenth has persevered. It's observance has waned through the years
under the oppression of Jim Crow laws and attitudes, but
the festivities that began in Texas eventually spread to more states,
and the idea of commemorating black independence picked up through
the civil rights era of the nineteen sixties, and the
parties continue today. Austin said, the kinds of celebrations that

(04:48):
I've seen and been a part of have been incredibly wonderful.
They're about Black culture, They're about Black history. They're about
the resistance and the resilience of the black community. Several
years before Granger made his June nineteenth declaration in Galveston,
famed American orator Frederick Douglas, himself formerly enslaved, spoke to
an abolitionist group in New York about the fourth of

(05:10):
July as being a day of independence and how it
didn't fit for all Americans. He said, what to the
American slave is your fourth of July? I answer? A
day that reveals to him, more than all other days
in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which
he is the constant victim. Openly a former school teacher

(05:31):
and counselor in Fort Worth, Texas, has been instrumental in
trying to get Juneteenth recognized as a national holiday. This year,
she'll walk from the Fort Worth Convention Center to the
Will Rogers Colisseum, leading a caravan and urging people to
sign a petition for the cause. Lee, who is ninety
three years old, has been part of the Fort Worth
Juneteenth festivities for more than forty years. She said last year,

(05:54):
it's as important as the Fourth of July. In fact,
I dream someday they celebrate from the nineteenth to the
fourth like they do. Marty Gras, I haven't dreamed as
large as the Rose Bowl or the Macy's Parade, but
I'm getting there. To those who observe June tenth, despite
its shaky beginnings and it's still unfulfilled, pledge, the day
still holds a promise of freedom, independence, equality, ideas and

(06:17):
ideals always worth celebrating. Today's episode was written by John
Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this
and lots of other topics, visit how Stuff works dot com.
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