Juneteenth celebrates the U.S. Army’s enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas (and therefore the United States) on June 19, 1865.
Juneteenth in New York City 2025
There are many Juneteenth celebrations in New York City on the weekend before and after. The biggest are in Harlem, Brooklyn, and at the Brooklyn Museum.
This year is weird because of the U.S. Government’s attacks on institutional support for African Americans, so there are fewer Juneteenth celebrations. Nobody wants trouble, and nobody knows what to do, so many don’t do anything. It’s a shame because we are all Americans.
Juneteenth is important to African Americans because it is the rare public acknowledgement of our original sin. It’s important to Americans of color since many of us have been mistreated just because of our ethnicity. Juneteenth should be important to all Americans because of our core value of “liberty and justice for all.”
There are many important African American communities across the United States. New York, called “the secret African city” by American art historian Robert Farris Thompson (Yale University) is one of them. So Happy Juneteenth!
Juneteenth
Texas was originally a state of Mexico. Mexico had invited settlers to populate the land. The “Texicans” wanted to implement human slavery. That had been banned in Mexico since 1829, so the Texicans seceded as the Republic of Texas in 1836.
The Emancipation Proclamation ended legal slavery in the U.S. as of January 1, 1863, but that was during the U.S. Civil War (1860-1865) and Texas was one of the confederate traitors to the United States. As the war destroyed the confederate south, many plantation owners abandoned their land and fled to Texas.
The U.S. Civil War ended on April 9, 1865, but Texans continued to practice human slavery. On June 19, 1865, the U.S. Army landed in Galveston, Texas and declared that enslaved people were now free. Black Texans celebrated the first Juneteenth on June 19, 1866.
Juneteenth became a national holiday in 2021 after America was shocked by the police lynching of George Floyd in 2020. This celebration isn’t just about a day in history. It’s about moving towards the core promise of the United States that all Americans are treated the same. We are not there yet, but celebrating Juneteenth together as Americans is a step in the right direction.
Columbus Day, which is much hated in the Latin world, was actually instituted to stop American Southerners from lynching Italians after a major international incident. It worked and Italians became just Americans.
More Information
nps.gov (National Park Service)
archives.gov