General #3 the Juneteenth order. The people
of Texas are informed that in
accordance with a 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 an employer and hired labor.
You can imagine
the burden lifted from these people,
the men, the women, the children that
knew that they were shadow property,
and now understanding that they were free.
But the question that was lingering was
what did freedom look like? The slaves
built this country.
They had a sense of who they were. They
very quickly built a sense of community.
To what degree have we actually
achieved the absolute freedom
that Juneteenth promised, ignoring
these painful histories doesn't
mean that they don't still
influence us. We stand on the
shoulders of those that came before us,
and we need to honor their memory. By
telling this story.
June Teeth 1865 to 2021.
Galveston, TX place known for
tourism and quick getaways.
But it's the history which happened
here that impacts us all today.
African slaves were brought
here on ships in the 1800s,
but even after the slave trade
ended slavery here did not.
It was 1865 June 19th.
Now known as Juneteenth when
Union soldiers arrived and
told slaves they were free.
It came two years.
After President Abraham Lincoln
announced slavery had ended
in the United States.
And we should remember this
important date. June 19, 1865.
Represents the evolution of our
country to a more perfect union.
We were not perfect in fifteen 2816,
nineteen 1776, eighteen, 65.
Or even the day in 2021,
but we're moving, hopefully
to a more perfect union.
Juneteenth is directly related
to the history of the Civil War
and the emancipation of enslaved
people in the Confederacy.
Juneteenth is important for Texas
because that is when enslaved
Texans learned they were free and
that the Confederacy had fallen.
So we're standing in the 2200 block of the
Strand Historic District in Galveston.
This was the harder the commercial
district, and at one time was
the largest city in Texas.
The largest enslaver also
lived here in Galveston.
They own 7 plantations
for in Brazoria County,
two in Matagorda County
and one in Fort Bend, Texas.
Was this safe haven for slavery?
They did what they called the running
of the slaves that was basically
moving their slaves to Texas because
there was no union presence in Texas.
When Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation,
he knew that that would not
immediately end slavery, and it didn't,
and the reason is fairly simple.
The Confederate States of America
had formed its own country.
They elected their own president.
Confederate states printed their own money,
which is why the Confederacy and
the United States went to war.
the United States goal at the beginning
of the war was just to restore the Union.
The first war goal was not to
emancipate the enslaved population,
and there were
all these myths and stories
about what happened and why.
It took 2 1/2 years for the word
to reach Texas plantation owners
in Texas were well aware of
the ************ proclamation,
but they ignored it.
What they cared about was maintaining
the agrarian economy in Texas and
that was a solidly based on cotton.
And to maintain that they needed slave labor.
General Gordon Granger
was on his way to Texas.
Most of the tax authorities
had a pretty good idea what
he was coming to Texas to do.
Granger was in
Texas for about a month. He sent his
troops. There were white
soldiers and black soldiers,
plantation to plantation,
making the announcement.
Those black soldiers are people who
especially helped shift the Union war
goals from award to restore
the Union into a war of
emancipation. It was
personal for them.
They went over to the old custom
house on 20th St to the courthouse
square from the courthouse square
to the color church on Broadway,
which was really checked. Some
of the dock
workers were among the first to get the
word, and so the celebrations began.
Give us a sense of what it must have
been like. For slaves on Juneteenth,
when they heard that message, you know that
was something that was
almost like going ahead.
The celebrations just to be so
excited to taste that that freedom.
The initial celebrations there
would be prayer services
looking back. At our journey of this
country and what we had to endure.
In *******? And the people.
The people who never lived.
To see that day.
I think it's inescapable.
Not to remember those people.
Transatlantic voyage the middle
passage people jumping off
ships to avoid the treatment that they would
have to endure.
No, wait, almost didn't tell you no.
It was free. No, he didn't killed.
I think not a steady weickum.
Six months after their six months and
turn them loose on the 19th of June.
That's why you know you
celebrated a colorful.
Celebrate that day.
One of the quotes at the time.
Most fund is from a former
slave named Felix Haywood.
Slavery could make you free,
but it couldn't make you rich.
Because a lot of slaves thought
that now that they were free, they
would be rich
just like the white man you
think about the elation,
the trepidation of enslaved people
not knowing what the future holds
and being enslaved and Bundy's bid
is being lifted from their backs.
And there was
one non narrative about one
slave who got the word,
and his sister said brother gave
a whoop. Anne ran away and
I never saw him again.
Was the South ready to free slaves?
No, we know that even
though the order indicated in slave or free,
if you look at the last sentence,
it gives some instructions of
what they can or cannot do. The
freed men are advised to remain quietly at
their present homes and work for wages.
They are informed that they will
not be allowed to collect it.
Military post and that they will
not be supported in idleness,
either there or. Elsewhere, when
you tell you free, you thinking
that oh I can live my life.
But it wasn't like that. On
one hand, you were free. By name, but the
actual reality of freedom.
You were not fully experiencing that
there were a lot of very frightened former
slaves and a lot of them
stayed on the plantation.
They laid the bricks in the downtown
area here where we stand on many
of these buildings not only laid
the bricks, but made the bricks.
Just off Galveston's bustling
Broadway street is Ashton Villa,
built in 1859 by James Monroe Brown,
a loyalist to the Confederacy.
Dubbed an honorary Colonel,
Brown was also a wealthy banker,
architect and Mason,
who designed what's believed to be Texas.
First all brick house,
a palace with bricks all laid by slaves.
Anywhere you read, they will tell you
that you know slaves did all the work.
For this they had to follow with
the contractor was either telling
them or showing them in order to
do it and look at this place.
It's beautiful all of the intricacies
and the detail that still stand today.
It's amazing.
1859 one of the few buildings
that withstood the 1900 storm.
Aston Villa was saved
from demolition in 1970,
the historic home, now, an event space,
is operated by the Galveston Historical
Foundation and Home to the island's
annual Juneteenth celebration.