Juneteenth

(An entry from the archives at Wordorigins.org, dated 30 June 2022)

Juneteenth is celebrated on 19 June and is, obviously, a blend or portmanteau of June + nineteen. It commemorates the date in 1865 when Major General Gordon Granger of the Union army freed the slaves in Galveston, Texas. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had legally freed the slaves in all the rebelling states as of 1 January 1863, but the order was, of course, not carried out immediately, and the far reaches of Texas were one of the last places where Union forces could enforce the order. So, Juneteenth celebrates the freeing of the last slaves in the United States.

The earliest extant use of Juneteenth is a line the Galveston Daily News of 22 May 1890 that quotes the Black newspaper the Beaumont Recorder (date unknown):

For Galveston to send abroad for orators for its coming “Juneteenth” is like carrying coal to Newcastle. There are about as good speakers—persons who know all about English as she is spoke—in the city by the sea as anywhere.

In the nineteenth century, Juneteenth celebrations were largely confined to Texas. Here’s a description of the 1892 celebration in Galveston that appeared in the White Galveston Daily News of 18 June 1892. Despite the racist language, it gives a nice description of the events and is notable in that it shows that complaints about the commercialization of celebrations such as this are not a recent phenomenon:  

The glorious “Juneteenth” began to be celebrated by the colored people to-day. A procession composed of a brass band, decorated float containing the goddess of liberty and attendants, orators and distinguished visitors in carriages, and a number of baseball nines on foot, was formed at noon and marched to the fair grounds, where there was speaking, amusement for children, coronation of the goddess of liberty and baseball, ending with a ball at night. The celebration will continue through to-morrow and the next day.

There was not much of a crowd in from the country, and a good many of the town darkies declined to have anything to do with the celebration, for they say they can’t see the use of celebrating the 17th and 18th, because Emancipation day is the 19th, and in addition to this they charge the management is running the thing for the money there is in it and they don’t think that the day of freedom should be utilized in that way.

During the twentieth century, especially as a result of the Great Migration of Blacks from the South to the North and West, Juneteenth began to be celebrated by Black communities throughout the United States. Texas made it an official state holiday in 1980, and over the following decades most other states followed suit. Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021.

Sources:

“A Free Summer Normal.” Galveston Daily News, 18 June 1892, 1. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2004, s.v. Juneteenth, n.

“The State Press.” Galveston Daily News, 22 May 1890, 4. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.

Photo credit: Grace Murray Stephenson, 19 June 1900, Austin History, Austin Public Library.