LibGuides: Juneteenth: Home

In the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that slaves in the Confederacy were free. The document reads in part:

That on the 1st day of January, in the year of our Lord 1863, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

But word of their emancipation didn't reach African Americans in Texas until June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger formally announced the news in Galveston, Texas, as follows:

The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.

OTHER LIBRARY BOOKS

LINCOLN'S HUNDRED DAYS: THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION AND THE WAR FOR THE UNION by Louis P. Masur (2012)
Lincoln's Hundred Days is the first book to tell the full story of the critical period between September 22, 1862, when Lincoln issued his preliminary Proclamation, and January 1, 1863, when he signed the final, significantly altered, decree. In those tumultuous hundred days, as battlefield deaths mounted, debate raged. Masur commands vast primary sources to portray the daily struggles and enormous consequences of the president’s efforts as Lincoln led a nation through war and toward emancipation. With his deadline looming, Lincoln hesitated and calculated, frustrating friends and foes alike, as he reckoned with the anxieties and expectations of millions. We hear these concerns, from poets, cabinet members and foreign officials, from enlisted men on the front and free blacks as well as slaves. Masur presents a fresh portrait of Lincoln as a complex figure who worried about, listened to, debated, prayed for, and even joked with his country, and then followed his conviction in directing America toward a terrifying and thrilling unknown.
RETHINKING AMERICAN EMANCIPATION : LEGACIES OF SLAVERY AND THE QUEST FOR BLACK FREEDOM edited by William A. Link and James J. Broomall (2015)
On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, an event that soon became a bold statement of presidential power, a dramatic shift in the rationale for fighting the Civil War, and a promise of future freedom for four million enslaved Americans. But the document marked only a beginning; freedom's future was anything but certain. Thereafter, the significance of both the Proclamation and of emancipation assumed new and diverse meanings, as African Americans explored freedom and the nation attempted to rebuild itself. Despite the sweeping power of Lincoln's Proclamation, struggle, rather than freedom, defined emancipation's broader legacy. The nine essays in this volume unpack the long history and varied meanings of the emancipation of American slaves. Together, the contributions argue that 1863 did not mark an end point or a mission accomplished in black freedom; rather, it initiated the beginning of an ongoing, contested process.
AFRICAN AMERICANS IN SOUTH TEXAS HISTORY edited by Bruce A. Glasrud (2011)
The history of South Texas is more racially and ethnically complex than many people realize. As a border area, South Texas has experienced some especially interesting forms of racial and ethnic intersection, influenced by the relatively small number of blacks (especially in certain counties), the function and importance of the South Texas cattle trade, proximity to Mexico, and the history of anti-black violence. The essays in African Americans in South Texas History give insight into this fascinating history. The articles in this volume, written over a span of almost three decades, were chosen for their readability, scholarship, and general interest.
BECOMING FREE IN THE COTTON SOUTH by Susan Eva O'Donovan (2010)
This boldly argued work focuses on a small place--the southwest corner of Georgia--in order to explicate a big question: how did black men and black women's experiences in slavery shape their lives in freedom? The reality of slavery's demise is harsh: in this land where cotton was king, the promise of Reconstruction passed quickly, even as radicalism crested and swept the rest of the South. Ultimately, the lives former slaves made for themselves were conditioned and often constrained by what they had endured in bondage. O'Donovan's significant scholarship does not diminish the heroic efforts of black Americans to make their world anew; rather, it offers troubling but necessary insight into the astounding challenges they faced. Becoming Free in the Cotton South is a moving and intimate narrative, drawing upon a multiplicity of sources and individual stories to provide new understanding of the forces that shaped both slavery and freedom, and of the generation of African Americans who tackled the passage that lay between.

Advertisement, Dallas Express, June 12, 1920
Image courtesy of Chronicling America

Emancipation Proclamation and "Juneteenth" General Order No. 3 (1 min.)
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

LIBRARY AND OTHER VIDEOS

THE HISTORY BEHIND JUNETEENTH AND WHY IT RESONATES TODAY
Juneteenth commemorates the official end of slavery in Texas on June 19, 1865, two years after the singing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Here’s why it still resonates. Produced by the Washington Post. [EXTERNAL RESOURCE] (2.5 mins.)
MS. OPAL LEE ON JUNETEENTH
Ms. Opal Lee has walked for miles--literally and figuratively--to bring attention to Juneteenth. On Thursday, Ms. Lee visited the White House to be a part of the President’s bill signing to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. [LIBRARY RESOURCE] (2.5 mins.)
ON JUNETEENTH
In her book On Juneteenth, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed tells the sweeping story of Juneteenth’s integral importance to American history and provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond. Joining Annette Gordon-Reed in conversation is Roy Young, CEO of James Madison’s Montpelier. [LIBRARY RESOURCE] (64 mins.)
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION EXPOSED
The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most important and misunderstood documents in U.S. history. So, what did it actually proclaim? [LIBRARY RESOURCE] (2 mins.)
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 150TH ANNIVERSARY AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES
The original Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln is in the holdings of the National Archives. To protect the document from light damage It is publicly displayed only a few days each year under extremely low light. In this video from the National Archives, senior archivist Reginald Washington and senior conservator Terry Boone discuss the document's significance, its history and measures taken to preserve it. [LIBRARY RESOURCE] (4 mins.)
THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION AND THE END OF SLAVERY
Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in America at the time it was written, it fundamentally changed the character of the Civil War. Overnight, a war to preserve the Union became a war for human liberation. A distinguished panel discusses the Emancipation Proclamation and its symbol of hope for the nearly 4 million enslaved people who were held in bondage. Moderated by David Blight, professor of history at Yale University, panelists include Edna Greene Medford, professor of history at Howard University, and others. [LIBRARY RESOURCE] (96 mins.)

Martha Yates Jones and Pinkie Yates in a Decorated Buggy for Juneteenth, 1908
Image courtesy of Houston Public Library Digital Archives

WEB RESOURCES

JUNETEENTH
National Museum of African American History & Culture
LEARN ABOUT AND CELEBRATE JUNETEENTH
PBS
WHAT IS JUNETEENTH? by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
PBS (WNET)
JUNETEENTH
NAACP
THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND EMANCIPATION
Library of Congress
CELEBRATING JUNETEENTH: A READING OF THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
NPR
13TH AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION: ABOLITION OF SLAVERY (1865)
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
13TH AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION: PRIMARY DOCUMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
Library of Congress
SLAVERY IN AMERICA
History Channel
INTERNATIONAL SLAVERY MUSEUM
National Museums Liverpool
FIRST PUSH FOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN RIGHTS
Texas State Library and Archives Commission