Understanding the Legacy of Juneteenth
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Juneteenth is a national holiday that takes place every year on June 19th. Also known as "Emancipation Day” or “Freedom Day,” Juneteenth was a pivotal moment in history when the United States advanced toward becoming a nation that grants freedom and equality to all its citizens. Juneteenth became a state holiday in Texas in 1979, and it was only five years ago in 2021 that this crucial day in U.S. history became a national holiday. To truly understand the legacy of Juneteenth, we need to go back in history to the Civil War.
On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation declared that all enslaved people held in areas still in rebellion during the Civil War “are and henceforward shall be free.” With this proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln hoped that many Black men, especially those enslaved in the Confederate states, would join the Union Army. But while this was a critical moment in United States’ history, it did not end slavery.
News of the proclamation was slow to reach all enslaved people, and in some places, slaveholders hid the news to try to preserve slavery. It was not until June 19, 1865—two and a half years later—when U.S. Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, with more than 2,000 troops and issued General Order No. 3, enforcing the end of slavery, that Juneteenth was birthed.
General Order No. 3 led to the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865 which ended slavery in all states. This led to the 14th Amendment in 1868 which gave citizenship, due process, and equal protection to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. Then finally, the 15th Amendment in 1870 gave Black men the right to vote and hold office. (Note that Black women, and all women in the U.S., did not receive the right to vote until fifty years later when the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920.)
Although slavery has been officially abolished since 1865, one could argue that modern-day slavery continues to exist in the United States through the mass incarceration of people of color. According to the Mass Incarceration Trends report released in April 2026 by The Sentencing Project, the U.S. prison system of control “is vast, unevenly applied, and deeply consequential, with far-reaching social, economic, and political effects. People of color are acutely impacted. Nearly two million people, disproportionately Black, are living in prisons and jails instead of their communities. This contrasts sharply with the early 1970s, when this number was 360,000.”
Research has shown that systemic racism and police tactics unfairly target and ensnare Black and Brown people into the prison system, with one strategy being the charging and sentencing practices that give stiffer punishments to people of color. According to the Mass Incarcerations Trends report, “One in five Black men born in 2001 is likely to be imprisoned at some point in their lifetime. People of color remain massively overrepresented in prisons, accounting for nearly 7 in 10 people in prison.”
When freedom is taken away as punishment for a crime, what is being done to help individuals to rehabilitate and successfully reintegrate into society?
What consequences are borne upon the individual, the family, and the community when freedoms are removed?
This June 19th, consider the legacy of Juneteenth and what freedom truly means. While Juneteenth is an important day to be celebrated by all Americans, it is also a day for reflecting on what each of us can do to ensure that freedom is sustained for all.
Sources:
Why We Celebrate Juneteenth
The 19th Amendment, Explained
Mass Incarceration Trends report https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/mass-incarceration-trends/
The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons
Authored by Peg Cheng