'You can read about Juneteenth. You can watch a documentary about Juneteenth, but if you want to be immersed in the story, you have to visit Galveston, Texas, and the sites associated with June 19, 1865,' says J19Galveston's Sam Collins. | via NPR
GALVESTON, Texas — As a blazing sun rises over Galveston Island on the Texas coast, Sam Collins stands on the spot where history happened 157 years ago.and Strand where Gen. Gordon Granger set up his Union headquarters," says Collins, co-chair of the Juneteenth Legacy Project and unofficial tourism ambassador of Juneteenth in Galveston.
That was the day the Union general, who had recently sailed into Galveston to take command of the District of Texas, posted a brief order to the citizenry that included the soaring words:"All slaves are free." Texas was the last stop for Union troops who had been marching across the Confederate South and freeing slaves as they went. What was so unique about the Juneteenth Order that it is now a federal holiday?
Sam Collins remembers his grandmother telling him oral history that was handed down through the generations among Black Galvestonians. "It was not in any schoolbook," says Sharon Batiste Gillins."We celebrated Juneteenth in the family. It was a family affair. It was a church affair." "Consistent with the American culture it's already being commercialized," she says."We're gonna see things like the Juneteenth half-off sale.""Celebration Edition: Juneteenth Ice Cream,"For Gillins, along with local pride comes a dose of wistfulness."We have been celebrating it for so long and now it's national and we don't quite own it like we used to," she says.
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