Gordon Granger

It commemorates freedom that was delayed, justice that had to travel by word of mouth, and a lie, or at least a massive omission, that lasted far too long.

On June nineteenth, eighteen sixty-five, Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce General Order Number Three, that all enslaved people in Texas were now free in accordance with the Emancipation Proclamation.

The order came two and a half years after Lincoln had signed that document.

Texas, isolated and largely untouched by the Union army, had simply ignored it.

Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia.

Countless Black Americans remained in bondage even after Lee's surrender, and on June nineteenth of eighteen sixty-five, or what we now know as Juneteenth, General Gordon Granger let two hundred fifty thousand enslaved people in Texas know through General Order Number Three that they were free.

And some, in states like Kentucky and Delaware, were still waiting even after that.

As historian W. Caleb McDaniel has said about the days, weeks, and years following Juneteenth, quote, "Slavery did not end cleanly or on a single day.