It was on June 19, 1865, two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had become official, Major General Gordon Granger and his regiment of Union soldiers arrived at Galveston, Texas, and gave the news that the Civil War had ended, that President Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and the "enslaved were now and forever free.” June 19 became known as Juneteenth and in 2021, it became a federal holiday. Here are some of the observations being held ’round the Bay. | Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of 250 years of legalized enslavement of Africans in the United States. Long before the federal government declared Juneteenth a national holiday, June 19 had become synonymous with the end of legalized enslavement of Africans in the United States, even though the Emancipation Proclamation was signed on
