Today is Juneteenth, an annual holiday across the U.S. that commemorates the abolition of slavery.
June 19 marks the day in 1865 when roughly 2,000 Union Army soldiers landed at Galveston, Texas, with the announcement that enslaved people were now free. The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which formally abolished slavery in the U.S., wasn’t passed by Congress until January 31, 1865. It was ratified later that year.
