Like many Americans, I grew up believing that all enslaved persons were made free when the Emancipation Proclamation took effect in 1863. The story of how freedom came to the quarter-million enslaved Black people of Galveston Bay, Texas, two years later in 1865 was one I didn’t learn of until my late 20s.
Juneteenth was officially declared a federal holiday in 2021. And even though Black Americans have been celebrating the 19th of June for more than 150 years, for many of us it is still a new tradition.
