President Lee's Juneteenth Message
On June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas, Union Army General Gordon Granger completed the final order of the Emancipation Proclamation by informing both enslavers and the enslaved of slavery’s abolition. Granger cautioned the newly freed to wait for the establishment of the Freedman’s Bureau before fully embracing their rightful freedoms. That obviously wasn’t going to happen—this moment set off celebrations across Texas, and that day would become the holiday we know today as Juneteenth.
I vividly remember going to Juneteenth festivals with my parents when I was younger and feeling a sense of joy and freedom, as though these celebratory spaces were crafted to both pose the question and demonstrate the full potential and possibility of an unencumbered Blackness in place. Toa a large extent, that was the promise of Juneteenth: a marking of transition from abolition to Reconstruction, a declaration of opportunity with spatial implications
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