In 2021, when President Joe Biden made Juneteenth a federal holiday, it was the first many people in the country had heard of the centuries-old tradition – a 2021 Gallup poll found that 34% of Americans knew “a little” about Juneteenth, while 28% knew nothing at all about it.
In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which ended slavery in some Confederate states. Union soldiers, including some Black soldiers who themselves were formerly enslaved, traveled around the south to announce the order.
In Galveston, Texas, it wasn’t until 19 June 1865 that people who were enslaved found out about the declaration. Though Robert E Lee had surrendered in April, people continued fighting for the lost cause for months.
Juneteenth celebrates the day on which those in Galveston found out about their freedom, but there are other states across the country, such as New York, Ohio, Mississippi and Florida, that have their own emancipation days. While Juneteenth has become the most prominent emancipation celebration, it is not the only one. To this day, people across the country continue to mark the day on which their ancestors found out about the end of chattel slavery.
Throughout the country, the day on which people found out about emancipation – which spanned nearly 100 years between 1783, when Massachusetts abolished slavery following a series of court challenges, and 1865, when the 13th amendment was ratified – was a jubilant occasion. The day is variously called emancipation day, jubilee day or freedom day, depending on the locality.
“Black people are always celebrating and then they commemorate that celebration the next year, the next year, and the next year,” the historian Allison Dorsey said. “So Juneteenth is just a continuation of that process of people celebrating their emancipation.”
‘There’s music. There’s song. There’s food. There’s dancing’
The signing of the emancipation proclamation is marked in a variety of ways across the country, such as through “Watch Night”, or “Freedom’s Eve”, observances, held annually on 31 December. Historically, enslaved people had traditional celebrations on 31 December, during which they would gather to worship and pray out the old year and welcome in the new year.
But the day Lincoln issued the preliminary proclamation, 22 September 1862, is also celebrated, for instance, across Appalachia and elsewhere. In Gallia county, Ohio, it has been celebrated continuously since 1863. The celebration there is like a “homecoming”, in which people gather to remember the fight for freedom, learn history and genealogy, sing, dance and fellowship.
Another important date is 8 August, when in 1863, Andrew Johnson, the military governor of the state of Tennessee who later succeeded Lincoln as president, manumitted the people he held in bondage. Following Johnson’s act, Samuel Johnson, a formerly enslaved man, ensured that the community celebrated 8 August annually in Greenville, Tennessee. This year’s festivities will include a block party and cookout, gospel singing, bouncy houses and a festival.
In Florida, 20 May is celebrated as the day that Union troops arrived, read and enforced the emancipation proclamation. That came in 1865, and is still celebrated across Florida’s Big Bend community.
“Those celebrations look like previous celebrations,” Dorsey said, referring to the different observances across the south. “We celebrate in church. We celebrate in communities. There’s prayer. There’s music. There’s song. There’s food. There’s dancing.”
The emancipation days also had a political bent, with people using the time to bring education to newly freed people, who had legally been barred from learning to read or write, and to advocate for political power.
“I have an early letter from 1866 where former US colored troops are writing into Washington DC and saying, ‘We are now free men. We served in the Union army. We think we should have the right to vote,’” Dorsey said. “Congress is still having this conversation. It hasn’t yet decided that it’s going to do what becomes the 15th amendment, which is ratified in February of 1870. The nation is still murky, undecided, conflicted about [if] these people be made citizens, but Black people are really sure that they must have citizenship in order to secure their freedom.”
‘Texans provide a template for how to do this’
The tradition of Juneteenth spread with the movement of Black Texans across the south-east region and through their participation in the Great Migration. But the dominance of Juneteenth has been a source of tension for some.
“For me, the significance [of Juneteenth] is that it marks the recognition of the end of the armed struggle to maintain slavery,” Annette Gordon-Reed, a historian and law professor at Harvard Law School and author of On Juneteenth, said. “It’s the end of the military effort to keep slavery alive – it’s not the end of slavery formally in the country, but it represents the end of the organized fighting to maintain the system.”
Gordon-Reed said that the long, large and loud tradition of Juneteenth also helped assert its dominance.
“Texans are very chauvinistic,” she said with a laugh. “We kind of pressed it because it had been this long, continuous, organized thing, and a recognized state holiday. I would hope that it becomes a day to think about all the other ones as well.”
She hopes that the spread of Juneteenth and the resurgence of other emancipation days can become history lessons, during which people talk about and learn what happened.
“I think Texans provide a template for how to do this,” she said. “At Emancipation Park in Houston, and even when we celebrated in small towns, you recount the history, their songs, you tell the story. You have to fight against efforts to trivialize it, because we know that’s going to happen. It doesn’t have to take over if we’re vigilant about it. We have enough examples of how to do it from the way we’ve done it in Texas that I hope people follow it, that it becomes a day about, it remains a day about history and about family and community.”
William Isom, director of Black in Appalachia, said that he and other community members had discussed what the national energy behind Juneteenth may mean for other emancipation day celebrations since it became a federal holiday.
“People are excited about Juneteenth,” he said. “We have so many emancipation days across the country, this is kind of the day that we can all come together and be like, ‘OK, this is when we want to celebrate emancipation nationally.”
As local municipalities host celebrations around Juneteenth and otherwise recognize the day, it opens up space for people to continue – or begin – celebrating their local emancipation days.
“We need both,” he said. “We’ve got this formalized governmental holiday that unifies the whole country around the idea of freedom. But then you have these local [days] that are a little more robust and provide fortification for the communities.”
Some emancipation day celebrations are no longer celebrated, due to the passage of time, the movement of people and other factors. But even those celebrations have not been totally eradicated, and there exists a movement to revitalize local days.
In Columbus, Mississippi, for example 8 May, the day on which Union soldiers arrived to inform enslaved people about their freedom, was celebrated for many years before the tradition paused. It wasn’t until 2005 that the day had a resurgence, when a student at the Mississippi School of Math and Science (MSMS)and her teacher first organized a celebration around it. Today, community members and students at MSMS celebrate the holiday by bringing local history to life.
Last year, nearby Tupelo, Mississippi, began to formally recognize 15 July as its emancipation day after efforts by Carl B Mack and two city council members to rediscover and celebrate the day that was specific to that community.
“What I’ve always hoped is that instead of sort of ending these other celebrations, it’s sort of like an umbrella,” Gordon-Reed said. “It reminds people that there are other days. We could talk not only about Juneteenth, but we’ll talk about what they do in Florida and what they do in Virginia and other places that recognize their own emancipation days.”
