Juneteenth: Texas Slaveholders Hid Emancipation for Two and a Half Years

On the 160th anniversary of Juneteenth, historians documented how enslaved people in Texas were deliberately kept ignorant of the Emancipation Proclamation for approximately two and a half years after Lincoln signed it in January 1863. Slaveholders and Confederate officials suppressed the information to extract additional unpaid labor. Union soldiers arrived in Galveston on June 19, 1865, to enforce the order, marking the actual liberation of the last large population of enslaved Americans.