Each year on June 19, people around the United States celebrate Juneteenth. This holiday celebrates the end of slavery. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. But it did not take effect right away in the South. On June 18, 1865, a Union general led 2,000 soldiers into Galveston, Texas. The next day, he read the order to enforce emancipation. People remember this event on Juneteenth. The holiday’s name comes from combining “June” and “nineteenth.”
