Juneteenth Parade Celebrates the Soul of Freedom
The White Plains Juneteenth Heritage Committee sponsored the 11th Annual Juneteenth Parade & Festival on Saturday, June 13. Frank Williams Jr., Executive Director of the White Plains Youth Bureau was the Grand Marshal. Golden Seniors Joe Davis, Nancy Fitch, William Moye, and Cornelia Evans were also honored.
The 2015 theme “Juneteenth, 150 Years Later” was intended to highlight the importance of the historical event the Juneteenth holiday marks – the ending of slavery in the United States of America.
In 1865, two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which became official January 1, 1863, Union soldiers led by Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston, Texas with the news that the Civil War had ended.
According to the National Registry of Juneteenth Organizations there have been several attempts to explain why it took two and a half years for the good news to be proclaimed in Texas.
The historical record shows that the Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on Texas because of the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. With the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the Union forces in Texas became strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance both in Texas and in the South generally.
It was on June 19th that General Granger delivered the message – Juneteenth is a blended word – from June and nineteenth.
Currently Juneteenth is a State holiday observed in 43 states.
In 2014 Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) sponsored a bill to mark the 19th of June as Juneteenth Independence Day in America and thus a federal holiday. The bill passed through the Senate but has yet to be passed in the House of Representatives.
