Juneteenth, also known as Juneteenth Independence Day or Freedom Day, is an American holiday that commemorates the June 19, 1865 announcement of the abolition of slavery in the U.S. state of Texas, and more generally the emancipation of African-American slaves throughout the former Confederacy of the southern United States. Celebrated on June 19, the word is a portmanteau of June and nineteenth.[1] [2] Juneteenth is recognized as a state holiday or special day of observance in forty-five states.[3]

The holiday is observed primarily in local celebrations. Traditions include public readings of the Emancipation Proclamation, singing traditional songs such as Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and Lift Every Voice and Sing, and readings by noted African-American writers such as Ralph Ellison and Maya Angelou.[4] Celebrations may include parades, rodeos, street fairs, cookouts, family reunions, park parties, historical reenactments, or Miss Juneteenth contests.[5] The Mascogos, descendants of Black Seminoles, of Coahuila, Mexico also celebrate the Juneteenth.[6]

During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, with an effective date of January 1, 1863. It declared all slaves to be freed in the Confederate States of America in rebellion and not in Union hands. This excluded the five states known later as border states, which were the four slave states that were not in rebellion—Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri—and those counties of Virginia soon to form the state of West Virginia, and also the three zones under Union occupation: the state of Tennessee, lower Louisiana and Southeast Virginia.

More isolated geographically, Texas was not a battleground, and thus its slaves were not affected by the Emancipation Proclamation unless they escaped.[7] Planters and other slaveholders had migrated into Texas from eastern states to escape the fighting, and many brought their slaves with them, increasing by the thousands the number of slaves in the