Juneteenth Miracle
One-hundred and fifty-six years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, President Biden signed into law a federal holiday recognizing Juneteenth as a federal holiday.
It is only fitting that the holiday that recognizes the end of enslavement is made a holiday so late after the actual act, because it perfectly mimics the entire reason for Juneteenth in the first place.
Old Abe may have signed the proclamation but Texas being Texas and leaning into their desire to be a whites-only state, refused to release the more than two-hundred fifty-thousand enslaved people who lived in the state until Federal troops paid them a visit two years later. The troops arrived in Galveston in June of 1967, and let the state and the Black folk know that they were free.
Thus was born Juneteenth, since the actual day is lost in history and Black folk being Black folk, they didn’t let a little thing like a date stop them from starting the celebration.
The celebrations eventually spread from Galveston to other cities in Texas, most notably, Houston, where parades and festivals are part of the annual landscape of…
