Juneteenth: emancipation reaches Texas

Two months after Lee's surrender, Union general Gordon Granger landed at Galveston with federal troops and issued General Order No. 3, announcing that all enslaved people in Texas, about 250,000 of them, were free. Freed people celebrated the date each year with prayer, picnics and parades; the custom spread across the country, and Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021.