06/19/2026
JUNETEENTH
Each year on June 19, we celebrate Juneteenth to commemorate the end of slavery in the U.S.
The story of Juneteenth begins in Texas when Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston on June 19, 1865, with the announcement that slavery had ended. As the community listened to the reading of General Orders, Number 3, the people of Galveston learned for the first time that the Civil War was over. After more than a century of slavery and years of war, it was official. All slaves were now freedmen.
News traveled slowly, even stubbornly, during and after the War between the States. Over two years earlier, President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Only two months before Major General Granger arrived in Galveston, General Lee surrendered at Appomattox. In addition, the country was already mourning the assassination of President Lincoln. Just weeks before Granger arrived, the official final surrender took place. And yet, this community in the west remained the last to know of their freedom. They required word, official word, to feel the effects of what was already happening in the rest of the country.
"…the 19th of June wasn’t the exact day the Negro was freed. But that’s the day they told them that they were free… And my daddy told me that they whooped and hollered and bored holes in trees with augers and stopped it up with powder and light, and that would be their blast for the celebration." - Haye Turner, former slave.
Emancipation Timeline
January 1, 1863 - Emancipation Proclamation is signed by President Lincoln.
April 9, 1865 - General Robert E. Lee surrenders to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
April 14, 1865 - John Wilkes Booth assassinates President Abraham Lincoln, who died the next day.
May 12, 1865 - The Final battle of the Civil War occurs at the Palmito Ranch in Texas with Confederates claiming victory.
May 26, 1865 - The Civil War officially ended after General Simon Bolivar Buckner of the Army of Trans-Mississippi entered the terms of surrender.
PROUDLY
Celebrating JUNETEENTH -
Arkansas Spine and Pain