In 1980 Texas was the first state to declare Juneteenth to be a state holiday. Since then 42 other states, including my old home state of Washington, have joined Texas in officially recognizing this holiday.
Why Juneteenth? Why not September 22, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation? Or January 1 when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect?
Well, the answer to that question has to do with Texas, with Texas being the last state of the Confederacy restored to being under American control.
It was not until June 18, 1865 that 2,000 federal troops arrived at Galveston Island to begin the post Civil War occupation of Texas.
On June 19 Union General Gordon Granger stood on a balcony at Galveston's Ashton Villa to read to the crowd below what was known as General Order No. 3, with that order being the total emancipation of slaves.
Celebrating erupted among the last of the African Americans to learn they were now free.
And now, all these years later it is more than a little sickening that there are still some Americans who are hate filled moronic idiotic evil creeps who need to be removed from the planet.....
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