I grew up in Texas from age 12 to 22 where, each year on the 19th of June, the Black community celebrated the ending of slavery. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 2, 1862 as a threat against the Southern Confederacy.

Any State, then in rebellion against the United States, that did not return to the Union by January 1, 1863, would have its slaves declared "forever free." The Proclamation did not effect some 800,000 slaves in non-rebelling states including New York and New Jersey.

The State of Texas deliberately suppressed news of the emancipation in order to support its cotton industry for as long as possible. Slave owners in other states would send some of their slaves to Texas rather than emancipate them.

On June 19, 1865 Major General Gordon Granger led troops into Galveston, Texas and issued General Order No. 3. "The people are informed, in accordance with a proclamation of the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves and the connection heretofore between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The Freedmen are advised to remain at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere. By Order of Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger."

Five States now celebrate "Juneteenth" as the ending of slavery in the United States. Texas did not mark the official holiday until 1980, joining Florida, Oklahoma, Delaware, Idaho and Alaska in the only official recognition of the ending of the "peculiar institution" that, more than any other, made this nation what it is today.