On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers led by General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that all slaves in Texas were free. This came more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which had declared that all slaves in Confederate states were to be set free. However, the news had not yet reached many parts of the Confederacy, including Texas.
It is a day to celebrate and remember that while we have come a long way, there is still much work to be done.
