On January 1, 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It declared that enslaved people in the Confederate states were free. But a proclamation is only words on paper until someone can enforce it, and Texas was far from most of the fighting. Union troops did not control the state, so enslavement there continued much as before.

The war ended in the spring of 1865. Even then, news and authority traveled slowly to the western edge of the former Confederacy. On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and issued General Order No. 3. It informed the people of Texas that all enslaved people were free. The announcement came about two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued.

Freedom did not arrive all at once for everyone. Some enslavers delayed telling the people they held, and the years that followed brought new hardships and injustices. Still, June 19 became a day of celebration. Freed people and their families in Texas gathered every year for what they called Jubilee Day or Juneteenth, with prayer, food, music, and speeches. Some communities raised money to buy land for the gatherings. In Houston, a group of formerly enslaved men bought land in 1872 that became Emancipation Park.

As families moved to other parts of the country, they carried the celebration with them. In 1980, Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth an official state holiday. In 2021, it became a federal holiday, observed across the United States. A day that began with an announcement in one Texas city is now part of the nation's calendar.