The Emancipation Proclamation was signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, freeing enslaved people in Confederate states, but the news did not reach those in some southern states. It was two years later, on June 19, 1865, when Union troops, led by Major General Gordon Granger, arrived in Galveston, Texas and announced that more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state were free. “Juneteenth” has since been widely celebrated in the south as a day of Independence and became an official national holiday in 2021.
~ Debra Smith