Today is Juneteenth. The most recently recognized federal holiday (formalized in 2021 as Juneteenth National Independence Day), Juneteenth recognizes the freeing of enslaved people in Texas at the end of the Civil War.
In today's Wall Street Journal, Lucas Morel and Jonathan White write on the day's significance:
Juneteenth joined Independence Day as a federal holiday in 2021, celebrating the day the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in the outer reaches of rebel-held territory. Critics of Lincoln's proclamation—now as then—say it was ineffective because it took so long to be enforced. Yet Frederick Douglass, who devoted his life to freedom for black Americans, understood that paper declarations sowed the seeds of a more perfect union.
On June 19, 1865, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger declared at Galveston, Texas, that "all slaves are free" by virtue of Lincoln's edict dated Jan. 1, 1863. It took more than two years to make the promise of freedom a reality.
