Honoring Juneteenth - North Carolina Museum of History

Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of slavery’s end in the United States. From its Galveston, Texas, origin in 1865, African American Emancipation Day has become a federal holiday. Members of the USCT were present on that momentous June 19, 1865, day in Texas, as well as at many key battles of the war. Over 200,000 Black men and women responded to the Union’s call to arms, leading President Abraham Lincoln to announce that, “Without the military help of the black [sic] freedmen, the war against the South could not have been won.”