The day known as Juneteenth

Contrary to popular belief, slavery in the United States did not end entirely with President’s Lincoln of the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. Initially, President Lincoln freed the enslaved Africans in Washington, DC (a federal enclave) when he signed the Compensation Emancipation Act on April 16, 1862. Lincoln subsequently freed the enslaved Africans in Confederate states not occupied by the Union when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, but which did not go into effect until January 1, 1863. But the slaves in Texas, which had not been a Civil War battleground state, were not freed until June 19, 1865 when news finally arrived of the emancipation of the total American enslaved population with the reading in Galveston of “General Order No. 3.” Juneteenth has developed as a celebration and commemoration of that seminal event.

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Hot Links and Red Drinks: The Rich Food Tradition of Juneteenth

By Nicole Taylor

The New York Times

June 13, 2017