161 years ago today, 900 days after the Emancipation Proclamation, Union Major General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 informing the people of Texas that "all slaves are free"

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._3

Head Quarters District of Texas

Galveston Texas June 19th 1865.

General Orders

No. 3.

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.

The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

By order of Major General Granger

F.W. Emery

Major A.A. Genl.

The event has been commemorated since its first anniversary. Efforts to make Juneteenth a federal holiday began in 1996, and it finally became one in 2021.

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america was built on the back of slaves.

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Comments in Wikipedia@lemmy.world

Although this event commemorates the end of slavery, emancipation for the remaining enslaved population in two Union border states, Delaware and Kentucky, would not come until December 6, 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified. The federal amendment also put a definitive end to chattel slavery and indentured servitude in New Jersey, freeing approximately 16 elderly individuals. Furthermore, thousands of black slaves were not freed until after the Reconstruction Treaties of late 1866, when the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole tribes were forced to sign new treaties that required them to free their slaves.

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And even today, slavery in the US is still legal if imprisoned.

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There are more slaves in the world today than ever before.

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