Evanston Community Council

Happy Juneteenth, 💚🖤❤️🫶🏾💪🏾❤️🤍💙the annual commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States after the Civil War, has been celebrated by African Americans since the late 1800s.
On June 19, 1865, about two months after the Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Va., Gordon Granger, a Union general, arrived in Galveston, Texas, to inform enslaved African Americans of their freedom and that the Civil War had ended. General Granger’s announcement put into effect the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been issued nearly two and a half years earlier, on Jan. 1, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln.
The holiday is also called “Juneteenth Independence Day,” “Freedom Day” or
“Emancipation Day.”