On January 1st 1863, in the middle of America’s civil war, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation liberating all slaves living in Confederate states. But the order carried little weight in Texas, where there were few Union soldiers to enforce it. It took more than two years for the news of the mandate to reach slaves in Galveston, Texas.

On June 19th 1865, two months after the war had ended, a Union general rode in to inform the city that all enslaved people were henceforth free. It would be an additional six months before slavery was prohibited in the whole country (Lincoln had exempted the slave-holding states that had stayed in the Union from his order), but for generations African-Americans have celebrated the end of slavery on Juneteenth.

The Importance of Juneteenth – video