Joyce King: Declaring Juneteenth a national holiday is not an ending; it is a provocative new beginning

(Joyce King is a writer based in Texas and the author of Hate Crime: The Story of a Dragging in Jasper, Texas (Audible).) A presidential declaration in September 1862 did not magically free enslaved people. It also did not fully happen when the Emancipation Proclamation took effect Jan. 1, 1863. However, both dates inspired some to relocate their human property to Texas, delaying, for as long as possible, any notion of a precious freedom. There was still more money to be made, bodies to be bent, sugar cane and cotton to be chopped. Powerful landowners, deemed so by bank account or skin color, could not fathom an America that would replace their peculiar institution with a racial Reconstruction. Many would rather risk their own future potential and opportunity than see Black men work for money, till their own soil, or cast votes. More than two years later, on June 19, 1865, Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston to confirm reports that any enslaved person could no longer be held as chattel.

Granger may have peered out from the stunning Ashton Villa balcony to deliver the opening lines of General Order No. 3, but he and 2,000 soldiers also marched through the streets reading the decree at several locations to curious residents. From his headquarters at the Osterman Building, Granger began, “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” The full announcement was read, again and again, at the courthouse, at a Black church on Broadway, and later printed in a local newspaper. It was met with a range of emotions. While formerly enslaved people snatched lyrical phrases from the nearly 100-word summary, disbelieving whites were bitter. “All slaves are free” and “absolute equality of personal rights” were not new concepts to those who had successfully postponed the news. Liberation, to human beings who suffered the degradation of bondage and legalized terror, must have felt surreal. Order No. 3 advised them to stay put to “work for wages.” Free. Equality. Wages.