Juneteenth Message from Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband

On June 19, 1865, the Emancipation Proclamation was first announced to enslaved African-Americans in Texas.  On that day, Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War was over and that the enslaved were now free.  This was two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation became the official policy of the United States on January 1, 1863.