How did Juneteenth get its name? Here’s the story behind the holiday’s title

June 19 marks the third consecutive year of the eleventh month as a federally recognized holiday in the United States. Also known as Liberty DayEmancipation Day or America’s second Independence Day, the eleventh month commemorates the end of slavery in the USA after the Civil War.

Many Americans have celebrated it annually for more than a century, though the holiday wasn’t officially added to the national calendar until 2021. As the Black Lives Matter movement gained renewed power across the country and abroad the year before with the murders of blacks by the police Americans like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, public calls became louder for the federal government to recognize emancipation as the critical turning point it represented in U.S. history. Advocates once again sought leaders to codify the Juneteenth holiday into law, decades after communities began pushing for it. wider recognition of the eleventh month as an emblem of unity, power and resilience following the 1991 police beating of Rodney King.

Federal recognition came in 2021. A bill to solidify National Independence Day as a legal holiday passed almost unanimously in both chambers of Congress before being signed by President Biden on June 18. he said, “All Americans can feel the power of this day and learn from our history.” It was the first time a national holiday had been established in the U.S. since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created to honor the late civil rights leader’s birthday in 1983.

Juneteenth became a legal federal holiday in the US on the eve of its first national celebration on June 19, 2021. It is observed and celebrated every year on the same date.

The origins of the eleventh month

The name, Juneteenth, is a portmanteau, combining June and nineteenth. Its origins date back to June 19, 1865, when the last group of enslaved people in the American South were informed of their freedom under the Emancipation Proclamation. President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation more than two years earlier, on January 1, 1863, declaring that all those held as slaves were and would continue to be free.

The proclamation went into effect as the country approached the second year of the Civil War and was technically applied to enslaved people in the Confederate states. However, it could not actually be implemented in Confederate territory, and the war would not end in victory for the Union Army until much later, in the spring of 1865. In Texas, the westernmost state controlled by the Confederacy, news of freedom and the principles of the Emancipation Proclamation arrived that summer. On June 19, thousands of Union soldiers arrived in Galveston Bay, along the northeast coast of Texas on the Gulf of Mexico, and announced that all enslaved people in the state had been freed by executive order.

At the time, more than 250,000 black people were held as slaves in Texas alone, according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which writes in the holiday’s description that Juneteenth’s “historical legacy shows the value of never giving up hope.” in uncertain times.” As soon as the Emancipation Proclamation took root in Texas, those freed from slavery declared the day of its arrival as “Juneteenth,” in honor of the date it finally happened.

While the Emancipation Proclamation critically set the stage for the end of slavery across the U.S., it was the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that actually did it. Passage of the amendment in Congress and on Lincoln’s desk began in January 1865. It was ratified in December of that year, abolishing slavery throughout the country.

How to celebrate the eleventh month

Observing Juneteenth each year on June 19 commemorates that specific day in Galveston in 1865, but it is also symbolic. Many consider the holiday a joyous anniversary of independence and an opportunity to remember the country’s founding on centuries of slavery.

Historically, communities in different parts of the U.S. celebrated Emancipation Day on different dates, a tradition that nods to the fact that news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached people enslaved by the Confederacy at different times after the Civil War. In Florida, for example, advocates in 2021 pushed for the state to recognize and observe Emancipation Day on May 20 because that was the date in 1865 when news of Lincoln’s executive order reached enslaved people there. Washington, DC, has in the past celebrated a citywide Emancipation Day on April 16.

Eleventh month celebrations vary. Public festivities often include parades, parties, concerts, educational workshops, and other cultural events centered on art and cuisine. For some, celebrating Juneteenth is mostly about getting into the holiday spirit. Koritha Mitchell, an English professor at Ohio State University who celebrated Juneteenth growing up in a small town outside of Houston, told CBS News in 2021 that, for her, the day revolved around family and “creating community and connection.”

Opal Lee, the retired teacher and counselor whose activism played a major role in Juneteenth becoming a federally recognized holiday, recalled joyful memories of the annual celebrations in the Texas town where she lived as a child.

“When I was little and we lived in Marshall, Texas, we went to the amusement park,” she said in a CBS News Interview in 2022. “There would be games and food and food and food. I’m here to tell you it was like Christmas!”

Lee, now 97, became known as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth” for her famous journey from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C., to ultimately deliver 1.5 million signatures to Congress advocating a law to make the date a federal holiday. She shared her thoughts on the essence of Juneteenth in that 2022 interview.

“People think it’s a black thing when it’s not. It’s not a Texas thing. That’s not it,” said Lee. “Juneteenth means freedom, and I mean for everyone!”