Celebrating Juneteenth as our second independence day

It’s hard to imagine a time where news traveled slowly, but when Pres. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took effect in January 1863, the news was slow to be circulated, and even slower to be implemented. The Confederacy would not release people held in slavery on Lincoln’s say-so.

The outcome of the Civil War, however, made the proclamation a fait accompli. You would think the traitor Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House would have locked the end of slavery into place, but no. (I will go to my grave believing that Lincoln’s pardon of Lee set a dangerous precedent, but that’s another topic entirely.)

In the Confederate state of Texas — where some 200,000 people lived in slavery — word in the form of General Orders, No. 3 finally reached Galveston on June 19, 1865, and Galveston has become the locus of Juneteenth celebrations. Today, more than half of states acknowledge Juneteenth as an official holiday.

Here in Connecticut, Juneteenth is an official state holiday. State offices are closed. Individual school districts decide whether to close. Juneteenth has been a federal holiday since 2021.