2.24 Freedom Days: Commemorating the Ongoing Struggle for Freedom

The Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863. It was a wartime order that declared freedom for enslaved people in Confederate states still at war with the Union. It did not apply to the border slave states loyal to the Union, so slavery lasted there after the war ended, until those states abolished it or the Thirteenth Amendment did.

The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in December 1865, permanently abolished slavery in the United States, 'except as a punishment for crime'. That exception would later be used to force Black prisoners to work (3.3). Together with wartime emancipation, it secured freedom for about four million African Americans, nearly a third of the South's population, a huge first step toward freedom, justice and belonging in the land of their birth.

The Thirteenth Amendment didn't reach the nearly 10,000 African Americans enslaved by Native nations in Indian Territory. The US government negotiated treaties with those nations in 1866 to end slavery there. The treaties didn't automatically make the freedpeople full citizens of those nations, which led to long struggles over their rights (2.17).

Texas was the last Confederate state where slavery was still being enforced. On June 19, 1865, Union general Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and issued General Order No. 3. It announced that 'all slaves are free' and that freedom meant 'an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property' between former enslavers and the formerly enslaved. It was one of the first official documents to mention racial equality.

Freedpeople in Texas began celebrating the anniversary the next year. Early Juneteenth celebrations, also called Jubilee Day or Emancipation Day, included spirituals, new clothes that symbolized freedom, feasting and dancing. More than 150 years later, in 2021, Juneteenth became a federal holiday. The required photographs show celebrations in Philadelphia (2019), Louisville (2021) and Galveston (2021).

Juneteenth is one of many Freedom Days. Black New Yorkers celebrated the end of slavery in their state on July 5, 1827, and communities across the country have marked their own local emancipation dates.

• They honor ancestors who struggled to end slavery.
• They mark a freedom that was real but incomplete, as the fight for equal rights, protection and opportunity continued.
• They celebrate joy and community among African Americans, even when the nation was slow to recognize the moment.