Juneteenth

Today across America, communities celebrate #Juneteenth, a holiday that marks our country’s second independence day. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was made effective in 1863, it could not be implemented in places still under Confederate control. As a result, in the westernmost Confederate state of Texas, freedom finally came on June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay. The army announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as "Juneteenth" by the newly freed people in Texas. To learn more, join Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture Founding Director Lonnie Bunch III on a tour highlighting stories behind some of the Museum’s most important objects, including Nat Turner's bible, freedom papers of free African Americans, and a Sibley tent that housed African Americans who ran from Southern plantations in search of freedom with the Union army: https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/celebrating-juneteenth. Please join us in commemorating this day, richly deserving of the national recognition encouraged by the Black Lives Matter movement.

Pictured: This slave cabin was a dwelling on Edisto Island, Charleston County, SC, built on Charles Bailey's Point of Pines plantation in 1853 along with approximately nine other cabins of identical type. Read more at https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2013.57.