A woman carries the Pan-African flag, a symbol of black unity, at a Juneteenth parade in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Juneteenth celebrations commemorate the freeing of enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865.
Credit: © Tippman98x/Shutterstock

Two years ago, Juneteenth became a federal holiday. Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. This festival is held in many African American and other communities annually. The name of the festival refers to the date, June 19—the day the last enslaved people were freed in the southern state of Texas in 1865.

Juneteenth festivities often include family reunions, parades, prayer services, plays, and storytelling. Some communities hold longer Juneteenth festivals that span several days as a celebration of civil rights and freedom. Juneteenth is a federal holiday observed in the District of Columbia and by federal employees throughout the United States. In addition, all of the states have recognized Juneteenth in an official capacity.

The festival originated in Texas at the end of the American Civil War (1861-1865). In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared freedom for the enslaved people in the Confederate States in rebellion against the Union. However, many owners of enslaved people in Texas suppressed information about the emancipation even after the war ended in April 1865. On June 19, 1865, Gordon Granger, a Union general, entered Galveston, Texas, and ordered all enslaved people in the state to be freed. About 250,000 enslaved people, among the last remaining in the United States, were freed.

Juneteenth celebrations were held only in Texas and a few communities in other states in the South in the years following the war. Black Americans carried the celebration with them as they migrated to other regions. Today, Juneteenth festivals have become popular celebrations of freedom and Black American culture in many communities throughout the country. Texas became the first U.S. state to recognize Juneteenth officially, in 1980. Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021. In some places, Juneteenth is called Black Independence Day, Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, or Jubilee Day.

Harriet Tubman
Credit: Library of Congress

United States President Joe Biden has promised to accelerate a planned redesign of the $20 bill, to feature the abolitionist (anti-slavery activist) Harriet Tubman (1820?-1913). As it is now, the bill features a portrait of former president Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) on the front and a picture of the White House on the back. Jackson’s portrait will be replaced by a portrait of Tubman, a Black woman who helped hundreds of enslaved people in the United States escape to freedom.

In 2016, Secretary of the Treasury Jacob J. Lew proposed that Tubman be featured on the bill. But, the administration of President Donald J. Trump, who became president in 2017, postponed the change indefinitely. President Biden’s Treasury Department is determining how to speed up the process of adding Tubman to the $20 bill. Putting Tubman on the bill is intended to both celebrate and reflect the diversity of the United States.

Harriet Tubman was a famous leader of the underground railroad. The underground railroad was a secret system of guides, safehouses, and pathways that helped people who were enslaved escape to the northern United States or to Canada. Admirers called Tubman “Moses,” in reference to the Biblical prophet who led the Jews out of slavery in Egypt.

Tubman was born into slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore some time around 1820. Her name was Araminta Ross. She came to be known by her mother’s name, Harriet. Her father taught her a knowledge of the outdoors that later helped her in her rescue missions. When Harriet was a child, she tried to stop a supervisor from punishing another enslaved person. The supervisor fractured Harriet’s skull with a metal weight. Because of the injury, Harriet suffered blackouts. She interpreted them as messages from God. She married John Tubman, a free Black man, in 1844.

Harriet Tubman, acting alone, escaped from slavery in 1849. After arriving in Philadelphia, she vowed to return to Maryland and help liberate other people. Tubman made her first of 19 return trips shortly after Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This law made it a crime to help enslaved runaways.

Tubman became a conductor (guide) on the underground railroad. She carried a gun and promised to use it against anyone who threatened the success of her operation. She was assisted by white and free Black abolitionists. She also got help from members of a religious sect known as the Quakers. On one rescue mission, she and a group of fugitives boarded a southbound train to avoid suspicion. On another mission, Tubman noticed her former master walking toward her. She quickly released the chickens she had been carrying and chased after them to avoid being recognized. In 1857, Tubman led her parents to freedom in Auburn, New York. Slaveowners offered thousands of dollars for Tubman’s arrest. But they never captured her or any of the 300 enslaved runaways she helped liberate before the American Civil War (1861-1865).

Tubman continued her courageous actions during the Civil War. She served as a nurse, scout, and spy for the Union Army. During one military campaign along the Combahee River in South Carolina, she helped free more than 750 enslaved people. After the war, Tubman became the subject of numerous biographies. Upon returning to Auburn, she spoke in support of women’s rights. She established the Harriet Tubman Home for elderly and needy Black Americans. She died on March 10, 1913.

The people of Auburn erected a plaque in Tubman’s honor. The United States Postal Service issued a postage stamp bearing her portrait in 1978. The Harriet Tubman National Historical Park, in Auburn, includes Tubman’s home, the residence she created for elderly Black Americans, and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church she raised funds to build. The historical park, which is operated by the National Park Service, opened in 2017. Also in 2017, a museum at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park opened to the public. The national historical park, created by Congress in 2014, includes sites in Dorchester, Caroline, and Talbot counties on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

A woman carries the Pan-African flag, a symbol of black unity, at a Juneteenth parade in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Juneteenth celebrations commemorate the freeing of slaves in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865.
Credit: © Tippman98x/Shutterstock

June 19 is Juneteenth, a festival held in many African American and other communities to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. The name of the festival refers to the date, June 19—the day the last slaves were freed in the southern state of Texas in 1865. Juneteenth festivities often include plays and storytelling, parades, prayer services, and family reunions. Some communities hold longer Juneteenth festivals spanning several days as a celebration of civil rights and freedom.

However, this year’s Juneteenth looks different than celebrations past. The holiday is set against the backdrop of a pandemic (global outbreak) of the coronavirus disease COVID-19. Since March, much of the country has been under strict lockdown to help in social distancing. Many businesses and public places are only beginning to reopen. The celebration also takes added significance in the wake of protests against racism and the police use of force against African Americans, sparked by the killing of George Floyd and others.

Several museums and cultural centers are having virtual (online) Juneteenth celebrations. There will also be virtual film and music festivals. Another way to celebrate Juneteenth is to support such black-owned businesses as stores and restaurants—but be sure to follow social distancing guidelines to help keep everyone safe!

Juneteenth originated in Texas at the end of the American Civil War (1861-1865). In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared freedom for the slaves in Confederate states in rebellion against the Union. However, many slave owners in Texas suppressed information about the emancipation even after the war ended in April 1865. On June 19, Gordon Granger, a Union general, entered Galveston, Texas, and ordered all slaves in the state to be freed. About 250,000 people, among the last slaves remaining in the United States, were freed.

Juneteenth celebrations were held only in Texas and a few communities in other southern states in the years following the Civil War. African Americans carried the celebration with them, however, as they migrated to other regions of the country.

August 23, 2019

This weekend, August 23 to 25, a somber anniversary is taking place at the Chesapeake Bay city of Hampton, Virginia. It was there, at the town once known as Point Comfort, that African slaves were first brought to England’s American colonies in August 1619. Those first slaves, captured from Portuguese slave traders, were brought to Virginia 400 years ago in the English ship White Lion. Colonial officials traded food and supplies for the “20 and odd” Africans, beginning an ugly legacy of slavery. Slavery did not end in the United States until 1865, and its effects are felt to this day.

A historical marker details the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in English North America at Point Comfort, Virginia, in August 1619. Credit: National Park Service

Commemorative events in Hampton begin today with a ceremony at the Tucker Family Cemetery, where William Tucker, the first child born (in 1624) of those first slaves, is buried. William was the son of Anthony and Isabella, who, like their fellow captives, had been brought from the Kingdom of Ndongo in what is now the southwest African nation of Angola. Tomorrow, a new Commemoration and Visitor Center telling the story of those first slaves will open at Fort Monroe, the historic army fort in Hampton that is now a national monument. There will also be Black Heritage Tours, an educational African Landing Day Program, and a Commemoration Concert at the Hampton Coliseum. Sunday, a gospel music festival will highlight a “Day of Healing,” and the ceremonies will end with the release of butterflies and a nationwide ringing of bells. In addition, the Hampton History Museum is hosting events, and its traveling exhibit “1619: Arrival of the First Africans” is making its way around churches, community groups, libraries, and schools in Virginia.

Slaves were sold at public auctions in the southern United States. Pictures of blacks being sold like merchandise stirred much resentment in the North against slavery. Credit: Detail of The Slave Auction (1862), an oil painting on canvas by Eyre Crowe; Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York City

That first group of captive Africans in Virginia were classed along with indentured servants, because the colony did not yet have rules regarding slavery. Most indentured servants had a contract to work without wages for a master for four to seven years, after which they became free. Blacks brought in as slaves, however, had no right to eventual freedom, and they were sold at auction. Some Africans did gain their freedom, however, settling in the colonies and buying property. But racial prejudice among white colonists forced most free blacks to remain in the lowest levels of colonial society.

The slave population in America increased rapidly during the 1700′s as newly established colonies in the South created a great demand for plantation workers. By 1750, about 200,000 slaves lived mostly in the southern American colonies. The American Revolution (1775-1783) led to the birth of the United States, but all Americans were not yet considered “created equal.” By the early 1800′s, most Northern states had taken steps to end slavery, but more than 700,000 slaves lived in the South, and the numbers continued to increase. By 1860, the South held some 4 million slaves.

Many white Americans grew to feel that slavery was evil and violated the ideals of democracy. Such ideas were particularly widespread in the North, where slavery was less common. However, plantation owners and other supporters of slavery regarded it as natural to the Southern way of life. The North and the South thereby became increasingly divided over slavery. Eventually, the South rebelled against the North, starting the American Civil War (1861-1865). In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in the rebellious Southern states, and, in December 1865—after the South had surrendered—the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States officially ended slavery throughout the nation.

Racial prejudice against African Americans did not end there, however, and the decades after the Civil War were a constant struggle for equality. It was not until the civil rights movement of the 1950′s and 1960′s that acts, amendments, and laws formally banned racial discrimination. Racial prejudice persists in much of America, however, and the struggle for fair treatment continues.

February 13, 2019

Last week, in celebration of African American History Month, the African and Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress (LOC) in Washington, D.C., hosted an event called “Conversation on the Omar ibn Said Collection.” Omar ibn Said was a western African scholar who was captured and sold into slavery in the United States in the early 1800′s. Noted for his education and intelligence, Said—a Muslim who spoke Arabic—gained notoriety during his lifetime and wrote an autobiography in 1831.

Omar ibn Said in North Carolina in 1850. Credit: Yale University Beinecke Library (licensed under CC BY 2.0)

Autobiography of Omar ibn Said, Slave in North Carolina is the only known memoir written in Arabic by a slave in the United States. The LOC’s Omar Ibn Said Collection includes the original manuscript of his autobiography, as well as texts written in Arabic by western African slaves held in countries other than the United States. The conversation on Said’s autobiography included an examination of Muslim communities in Africa and the people who continued to practice Islam after being forced into slavery.

Credit: © African American History Month

Omar ibn Said was born around 1770 in what is now Senegal. After years of schooling in Africa, he was enslaved and taken by ship to Charleston, South Carolina. Shortly after Said’s arrival in the United States, he escaped but was captured in North Carolina and briefly imprisoned. During his 16-day detainment, Said wrote in Arabic on the prison walls. His writing caught the attention of wealthy farmer James Owen, who purchased Said and apparently encouraged his literary efforts. Said then wrote his autobiography and many works related to the Qur’ān, the sacred book of the Muslims. Although highly critical of Christians who supported and participated in slavery, Said converted to Christianity during his captivity. He died in North Carolina in 1864. An English-language version of Said’s memoir was first published in 1925.

November 26, 2018

On Nov. 26, 1883, 135 years ago today, the African American abolitionist Sojourner Truth died at age 86 at her home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Truth, whose given name was Isabella Baumfree, was the first black woman orator to speak out against slavery. She traveled widely through New England and the Midwest on speaking tours. Her deep voice, quick wit, and inspiring faith helped spread her fame.

Sojourner Truth died 135 years ago today on Nov. 26, 1883. Credit: Chicago History Museum

Baumfree was born a slave in Ulster County, New York. She became free in 1827 under a New York law that banned slavery. In 1843, she experienced what she regarded as a command from God to preach. She took the name Sojourner Truth and began lecturing in New York. (Sojourner is a word similar to wanderer or traveler.) Her early speeches were based on the belief that people best show love for God by love and concern for others. She soon began directing her speeches toward the abolition of slavery.

In 1864, Sojourner Truth visited President  Abraham Lincoln in the White House. She stayed in Washington, D.C., and worked to improve living conditions for blacks there. She also helped find jobs and homes for slaves who had escaped from the South to Washington. In the 1870′s, she tried to persuade the federal government to set aside undeveloped lands in the West as farms for blacks. But her plan won no government support.

In 1997, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) included a rover named Sojourner in Sojourner Truth’s honor as part of the Mars Pathfinder mission.

May 24, 2018

Last month, on April 26, the new National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened along with the new Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. The sobering memorial and museum—separate places built to complement each other—are dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people, people terrorized by lynching, and the injustice of dealing with racial segregation and discriminatory laws. They also detail the current burdens of African Americans facing unfair presumptions of guilt and excessive police violence.

The hanging memorials within the National Memorial for Peace and Justice detail the chilling history of the lynching of African Americans in the United States. Credit: Sonia Kapadia (licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

The memorial and museum were created by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), an organization committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, challenging racial and economic injustice, and protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society. Work on the memorial began in 2010 as EJI staff began investigating the history of lynchings in the American South. The numbers they came up with were staggering: more than 4,400 black people were lynched in the United States between 1877 and 1950.

Covering 6 acres (2.4 hectares), the Memorial for Peace and Justice details America’s history of racial inequality with unflinching glimpses of racial terror. The site includes sculptures and a central square with 800 hanging monuments that symbolize the brutal deaths of lynching victims. Each monument is peculiar to a county and state where lynchings took place, and each lists the names (when available) of victims and the dates when they were killed.

The memorial includes exhibits on the civil rights movement in the United States, with special attention paid to the local Montgomery bus boycotts of the 1950′s. Other exhibits deal with the contemporary issues of police violence and racial bias in the criminal justice system. The memorial displays writing from author Toni Morrison, words from civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr., and a reflection space in honor of journalist and reformer Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

A short walk away in Montgomery, the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration is built on the site of a former warehouse where enslaved black people were held before being bought and sold at a nearby auction site. Montgomery was once an important center of the slave trade in the American South, and many sites in the city chronicle this unfortunate history. Like the memorial, the 11,000-square-foot (1,022-square meter) museum details the chilling history of racism in the United States. First-person accounts tell the reality of living through the slave trade, and research materials and multimedia provide sobering details. The Legacy Museum also has exhibits on lynching, segregation, and the mass incarceration of African Americans.

February 8, 2018

In honor of Black History Month, today World Book looks at the Whitney Plantation, an open-air historical museum near New Orleans, Louisiana, dedicated to the victims of slavery in the United States. The sprawling Whitney Plantation Historic District includes fields of sugar cane, a French Creole barn, the opulent “Big House,” quarters in which enslaved people lived, and haunting ceramic statues of the “children of Whitney.” Whitney Plantation is one of many sites featured on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

Statues of slave children await visitors to the Antioch Baptist Church which was relocated to Whitney Plantation. Credit: Corey Balazowich (licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0)

Whitney Plantation was originally known as Habitation Haydel after the family who owned it from the late 1700′s until after the American Civil War (1861-1865). According to an 1819 document, the Haydel family owned 40 men, 21 women, and 9 children. By 1860, there were 101 people enslaved on the Haydel property. The slaves worked the sugar cane and rice fields, maintained the many plantation buildings, and cooked, cleaned, and cared for the Haydel family—as well as for one another. After the war ended and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution officially abolished slavery in the United States in December 1865, distilling and sugar magnate Bradish Johnson purchased Habitation Haydel and renamed it in honor of his grandson, Harry Payne Whitney.

Credit: © African American History Month

New Orleans attorney and real estate developer John Cummings purchased the Whitney Plantation in 1999. He soon began turning it into a museum, and set about restoring the grounds, constructing new buildings, hiring artists and scholars, and digging into the plantation’s historical records. Cummings’s staff at Whitney obtained the oral histories of about 4,000 Louisiana slaves compiled by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930′s. Memorial walls constructed at Whitney list the single names of thousands of Louisiana slaves, and a “Field of Angels” remembers the many slave children who died at Whitney and other Louisiana plantations. Other installations and placards re-create the harsh lives of the slave population. The Whitney Plantation opened to visitors in 2014 and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1992.