Rosie DiManno, Toronto Star columnist, wrote an excellent piece about the celebration.
On June 19, 1866, one year after the announcement, freedmen in Texas organized the first of what became the annual celebration of “Jubilee Day”. Early celebrations were used as political rallies to give voting instructions to newly freed African Americans. … By the 1890s, Jubilee Day had become known as Juneteenth.
Rosie DiManno, Toronto Star commentator, writes . . . .
Juneteenth, as it has now been officially consecrated, commemorated and codified, will today be celebrated across the United States, after President Joe Biden formalized it as a federal holiday, a mere two days ago.
Elevated to national status to mark the date, June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers brought the news to Texas that enslaved people were free.
It was two months after the Confederate surrender that marked the symbolic end of a horrific Civil War.
Which was nearly three years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared all slaves in the Confederate States who’d fought in that war were free men.
News moved slowly in those days.
And slavery didn’t actually end in states that had opposed the Proclamation until December, 1865, with ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, banning bondage.
It’s a Black watershed and holiday to be generously shared by everyone.
Read her full piece at Rosie on Juneteenth
