Enslaved people had already been emancipated; they just didn’t know it. “The June 19 announcement [about the end of slavery] came more than two and a half years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. So technically, from the Union’s perspective, the 250,000 enslaved people in Texas were already free — but none of them were aware of it, and no one was in a rush to inform them.” (Source: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/501680/12-things-you-might-not-know-about-juneteenth)

Learn more by visiting the LLCC Juneteenth Guide at https://library.llcc.edu/juneteenth.

LLCC’s upcoming Juneteenth activities include a celebration on June 20, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in A. Lincoln Commons and a book read of “On Juneteenth” by Annette Gordon-Reed. Get more details.