On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston with the news that slavery had ended — two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth, as the day came to be known, [is] recognized by 45 states, including Texas, but it's not a national holiday.
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"Bless our souls, we tried hard to assimilate, take on the white folks' ways, and we were ashamed that for two-and-a-half years, we didn't know we were free. In the states that did know, the people there laughed at us so we just sort of hunkered down. Now, I'm trying to get people to understand that slaves didn't free themselves. It took abolitionists, it took Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, all these people to make people aware of slavery and the atrocities that were happening. It's not just a black thing, it's the right thing. None of us are free until we're all free." [-- Opal Lee]
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