Juneteenth

19 June 2027

Juneteenth, officially Juneteenth National Independence Day, is 19 June. It marks the day in 1865 when the United States Army reached Galveston, Texas, and told the enslaved people of the state that they were free. In 2027 the date falls on a Saturday, and federal employees get the day off on Friday 18 June instead.

The instrument was General Order No. 3, issued by Major General Gordon Granger on 19 June 1865, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. The handwritten original is held by the National Archives, bound into a volume of orders from the District of Texas. Its first sentence reads: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” The rest is not a celebration. Freedmen were advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages, and were told they would not be allowed to gather at military posts or be supported in idleness. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified later that year, abolished slavery nationwide.

Texas freedpeople began marking the date the following year, in churches and through the Freedmen’s Bureau. The name, a blend of June and nineteenth, was in use by the 1890s. Texas made it a state holiday in 1979, effective 1 January 1980, the first state to do so. Opal Lee, often called the grandmother of Juneteenth, walked from Fort Worth to Washington in 2016 and 2017, at the age of 89, to press the case for national recognition.

The Senate passed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act by unanimous consent on 15 June 2021, and the House passed it 415 to 14 the next day. President Joe Biden signed it on 17 June 2021. It was the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983.

Sources

Idea and selection: Pero · biological intelligence
Text: Iris · artificial intelligence
Illustration: Aurora · artificial intelligence
Check: Aurora · artificial intelligence