![\"\"](\"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Juneteenth-300x200.jpg\")
RFI \u2014 Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army on April 9, 1865, effectively ending the bloody Civil War between the slave-holding South and the North.<\/p>\nRFI \u2014 Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army on April 9, 1865, effectively ending the bloody Civil War between the slave-holding South and the North.<\/p>\n
But it wasn’t until two months later that African American slaves in the Texas town of Galveston were informed that they were free.<\/p>\n
That day — June 19, 1865 — has been commemorated since then as Juneteenth, also known as Jubilee Day or Freedom Day.<\/p>\n
President Abraham Lincoln had actually freed slaves throughout the divided nation two-and-a-half years earlier, with the Emancipation Proclamation issued on January 1, 1863.<\/p>\n
But slaves in Galveston did not learn of their freedom until the arrival of Union troops under the command of Major General Gordon Granger.<\/p>\n
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation form the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free,” read an order from Granger.<\/p>\n
“This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves,” the general’s Order No. 3 said.<\/p>\n
According to the website Juneteenth.com, the first Juneteenth celebrations were held in Galveston in the years immediately following the war.<\/p>\n
In 1872, land was purchased in the Texas city of Houston to celebrate Juneteenth, an area now known as Emancipation Park.<\/p>\n
Celebrations of Juneteenth waned in the early 1900s but they experienced a resurgence after the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.<\/p>\n
Juneteenth was made a state holiday in Texas in 1980 and has since been embraced in some form by nearly all 50 US states.<\/p>\n
Legislation has been introduced in the US Congress to make it a National Day of Observance and the governors of New York and Virginia — the one-time capital of the Confederacy — have moved to make it an official state holiday.<\/p>\n
Several major US companies including Nike and Twitter recently announced that they were making Juneteenth a paid holiday for employees.<\/p>\n
This year’s celebrations will come against a backdrop of nationwide protests for racial justice following the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump had planned to hold a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 19 but he changed the date after a barrage of criticism.<\/p>\n
Trump said he did so after “many of my African American friends and supporters” reached out to suggest he change the date “out of respect for this Holiday.”<\/p>\n
Juneteenth is most often celebrated with backyard cookouts and prayer services but some cities hold parades and other events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RFI \u2014 Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army on April 9, 1865, effectively ending the bloody Civil War between the slave-holding South and the North. But it wasn’t until two months later that African American slaves in the Texas town of Galveston were informed that they were free. That day — June 19, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":86746,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latests"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}