As Black people migrated to other parts of the country, the tradition of celebrating Juneteenth spread with them, and the holiday was officially signed into law on June 17, 2021. Though President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation two years prior, effectively freeing all enslaved African Americans in Confederate states, the executive order was not enforced in Texas until the arrival of federal troops in Galveston in 1865. Juneteenth, a portmanteau of “June” and “nineteenth,” commemorates the day 250,000 African Americans were finally informed that they had been freed from slavery.
