On June 19, 1865, Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in this Gulf Coast port city with roughly 2,000 federal troops and issued General Order No. 3, declaring that "all slaves are free."

The announcement came more than two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation took effect on Jan. 1, 1863, according to the National Archives, which holds the original handwritten order. For the more than 250,000 enslaved people in Texas, freedom on paper had long since arrived, enforcement had not. The remote state had remained largely beyond the reach of Union forces until the war's final weeks.

Granger's order was read at several locations across Galveston and reprinted in newspapers statewide. The date became known as Juneteenth, a blend of "June" and "nineteenth," and was long observed by Black Texans as Emancipation Day, Freedom Day or Jubilee the last echoing the biblical Year of Jubilee, when enslaved people were freed and debts forgiven.

Slavery was not formally abolished nationwide until the 13th Amendment was ratified in December 1865, roughly six months later. Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021.