Juneteenth, in the U.S. officially known as Juneteenth National Independence Day, is also known as Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, and Black Independence Day. It was declared a federal holiday in the United States in 2021 commemorating emancipation of enslaved African Americans.
No local celebrations have been reported to the Light and Champion commemorating the holiday in Shelby County.
Juneteenth dates to “Freedom’s Eve,” or the eve of January 1, 1863, when the first Watch Night services took place. Enslaved and free African Americans gathered in churches and private homes all across the country awaiting news that the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect.
At the stroke of midnight, prayers were answered, as all enslaved people in Confederate States were declared legally free. Union soldiers, many of whom were black, marched onto plantations and across cities in the south reading small copies of the Emancipation Proclamation spreading the news of freedom in Confederate States.
Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was effective in 1863, it was not implemented in many places until the news was delivered. That was typically by Union troops.
As a result, in the westernmost Confederate state of Texas, enslaved people would not be free until June 19, 1865, when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas. The army announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state, were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as "Juneteenth," by the newly freed people in Texas.
Although the Emancipation Proclamation declared an end to slavery in the Confederate States, it did not end slavery in states that remained in the Union. For a short while after the fall of the Confederacy, slavery remained legal in two of the Union border states – Delaware and Kentucky. Those enslaved people were freed with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished chattel slavery nationwide on December 6, 1865.
When Juneteenth became a federal holiday on June 17, 2021, it was the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was adopted in 1983.