Letters from an American - June 18, 2025

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

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June 18, 2025. Today is the federal holiday honoring Juneteenth, the celebration of the announcement in Texas on June 19, 1865, that enslaved Americans were free. That announcement came as late as it did because while General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant of the U.S. Army on April 9, 1865, it was not until June 2 that General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department, the last major army of the Confederacy, to the United States in Galveston, Texas. Smith then fled to Mexico.

Seventeen days later, Major General Gordon Granger of the U.S. Army arrived to take charge of the soldiers stationed in Texas. On that day, June 19th, he issued General Order Number 3. It read, "...the people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with the 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.

Granger's order referred to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1st, 1863, which declared that Americans enslaved in states that were in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free. And the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons. Granger was informing the people of Galveston that Texas, having been in rebellion on January 1st, 1863,

their world had changed. The federal government would see to it that going forward, white people and black people would be equal. Black people in Galveston met the news Order Number Three brought with celebrations in the streets, but emancipation was not a gift from white Americans. Black Americans had fought and died for the United States. They had worked as soldiers, as nurses,

and as day laborers in the Union Army. Those who could had demonstrated their hatred of enslavement and the Confederacy by leaving their homes for the Northern lines, sometimes delivering valuable information or materiel to the Union, while those unable to leave had hidden wounded U.S. soldiers and helped them get back to Union lines. But white former Confederates in Texas were demoralized and angered by the changes in their circumstances. It looked like everything worth living for was gone, Texas cattleman George Goodnight

later recalled. In summer 1865, white legislators in the states of the former Confederacy grudgingly ratified the 13th Amendment, which abolished enslavement except as punishment for a crime. But they also passed laws to keep freed people subservient to their white neighbors. These laws, known as the Black Codes, varied by state, but they generally bound Black Americans to year-long contracts working in fields owned by white men, prohibited Black people from meeting in groups owning guns or property or testifying in court, outlawed interracial marriage, and permitted white men to buy out the jail terms of Black people convicted of a wide swath of petty crimes, and then to force those former prisoners into labor

to pay off their debt. Congress refused to readmit the southern states with the black codes in place, and in December 1865, Americans added the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Six months later, Texas freed people gathered on June 19th, 1866, to the Constitution. Six months later, Texas freed people gathered on June 19th, 1866 to celebrate the coming of their freedom

with prayers, speeches, food, and socializing. By then, congressmen had turned to guaranteeing that states could not pass discriminatory laws against citizens who lived in them, laws like the Black Codes. In 1866, they wrote and passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Its first section established that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein

they reside. It went on, No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." That was the whole ballgame, the one that would put teeth behind the principles in the Emancipation Proclamation. The federal government had declared that a state legislature, no matter who elected it or what voters called for, could not discriminate against any of its citizens or arbitrarily take away any of a citizen's rights.

Then, like the 13th Amendment before it, the 14th declared that Congress shall have the power to enforce by appropriate legislation the provisions of this article, strengthening the federal government. Rather than accept this new state of affairs, leading white Southerners decided they would rather remain under military rule.

So in March 1867, Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, calling for Southern voters to elect delegates to new state constitutional conventions. And, for the first time in U.S. history, they mandated that Black men could vote in those elections. Three months later, the federal government, eager to explain to black citizens their new voting rights, encouraged Juneteenth celebrations. And the tradition of Juneteenth began to spread to black communities across the nation.

The next year, the addition of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution remade the United States of America. In 1865, Juneteenth was a celebration of freedom and the war's end. In 1866, it was a celebration of the enshrinement of freedom in the U.S. Constitution after the 13th Amendment had been ratified. In 1867, Juneteenth was a celebration of the freedom of Black men to vote, the very real power of having a say in the government under which they lived. Celebrations of Juneteenth declined during the Jim Crow years of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but as black Americans from the South

spread across the country during and after World War II, they brought Juneteenth with them. By the 1980s, Texas had established Juneteenth as a state holiday. Other states followed, and in 2021, thanks in part to pressure from activist Opal Lee, Congress made Juneteenth a federal holiday and President Joe Biden signed the measure into law.

But throughout our history, those determined to preserve a government that discriminates between Americans according to race, gender, religion, ability, and so on, have embraced the idea that true democracy means reducing the power of the federal government and centering the power of the state governments, where voters, registered according to state laws, can choose the policies they prefer, even if they are discriminatory. They have also insisted, as former Confederates did in the late 1860s, that any laws protecting the equal rights of minorities discriminate against the white majority. In 2025, as the Trump administration echoes those people, celebrations of Juneteenth are

being cut back or even canceled. Corporate sponsors and local governments, as well as the national government, are pulling back their support for festivals and Juneteenth events. Our history matters. Juneteenth is the celebration of a new nation, one that would honor the equality of all Americans, and one that, 160 years after it was established, we are in danger of losing, as those in power set about rewriting the record. To make sure people can still get the real story of Juneteenth and why it matters, my team produced a short video available on YouTube called, What is Juneteenth and Why Does It Matter?

A Short History. Wishing you all a meaningful Juneteenth. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss. Thank you.