#Juneteenth is not only a Texas holiday or date. Instead, Juneteenth celebrated inside & outside Texas was & is the epitome of the idea—‘None of us are free until we are all free.’ https://twitter.com/henrylouisgates/status/1273281068574158848

#Juneteenth was the day that United States Army General Gordon Granger read military orders No. 3 from Galveston, Texas, (port of entry) announcing that all enslaved persons in Texas were from that moment no longer enslaved labor.

Texas was the last state in the Confederacy to have United States military enforcement of these military orders abolishing slavery (overall orders were first given in 1862). In Texas, as elsewhere, it did not happen at that moment or all at once.

In Texas, #emancipation in some cases took more than a year after June 19, 1865, for enslavers to stop or be forced to stop death threats & other forms of violence holding enslaved persons hostage. Further, in addition to emancipation Gordon also stated that enslaved persons

should stay put with their enslavers and try to make all efforts to work out labor contracts with them for compensated labor. Let me repeat—with their enslavers. The US government wanted order above all else. Even so, Juneteenth was celebrated in the years & decades that followed

because it represented the moment that the last Confederate state, the last slaveholding state, in the US was ordered to enforce emancipation. The #ThirteenthAmendment to the Constitution of the United States made

enslavement/involuntary servitude illegal “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction” the following December 1865, thus further solidifying emancipation.

Racism continued, lynchings and violence continued, horrific treatment of communities and individuals of African descent and underrepresented communities and individuals continue. Juneteenth held promise, and for many—the celebrations were both a memorial for that promise and

representations of hopes and dreams and investments in the present and future. Some generations refused over the years to celebrate Juneteenth because it represented memories of the oppression of slavery, while others made it a point to reverently commemorate no matter what.

People outside of Texas celebrated because of ties to Texas either personally or through their ancestry. Also, though, as a celebration of the last slave state’s ordered emancipation.

“No one is free until we are all free.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Until we are all free, we are none of us free.” Emma Lazarus

“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” Fannie Lou Hammer

May the memory of Juneteenth help us all realize that nobody’s free because everybody isn’t free, yet, and help us all work accordingly to find and implement the long lasting solutions.

For further information on the history and memory of #Juneteenth , please read scholarship by historian Elizabeth Hayes Turner in _Lone Star Pasts_, from @tamupress at https://www.tamupress.com/9781585445691/lone-star-pasts

and Shennette Garrett Scott, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and many others discussed in the following pieces— https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/what-is-juneteenth/

And https://daily.jstor.org/juneteenth-and-the-emancipation-proclamation/

End #thread.