Juneteenth is commemorated by African Americans across the country, but who knows what transpired on that fateful day in 1865? As the nation commemorates the second federal legal holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved people in Texas, several myths about the historical event persist.
Myth #1: President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, and, incredibly, it took two and a half years for slaves in Texas to learn about it.
Fact: Many slaves were aware of Lincoln’s emancipation executive order. The story was widely reported in Texas newspapers, with an anti-abolitionist slant, and black people overheard white people discussing it in private and public.
Furthermore, according to Edward T. Cotham, Jr., Texas Civil War historian and author of Juneteenth, The Story Behind The Celebration, “there was an exceptionally sophisticated communication network among slaves in Texas.” “That kind of information spread like wildfire. We know that some slaves were aware of the Emancipation Proclamation before slaveowners were. Because there was no army to enforce it, it was meaningless.”
June Collins Pulliam is a fifth-generation Galvestonian, whose enslaved great-great-grandparents, Horace and Emily Scull, were freed thanks to the Juneteenth Order. “It wasn’t that all these impoverished folks didn’t get the message; it was that no one was enforcing it, no one was making it happen!” she explains.
Myth #2: Major General Gordon Granger is credited with drafting General Orders No. 3, the Juneteenth Order, which freed Texas slaves.
Fact: Granger’s staff officer, Maj. Frederick Emery, who came from an abolitionist family in Free Kansas, wrote the order, which includes the powerful words “all slaves are free” and “total equality.” In his Juneteenth book, Cotham writes, “As a campaigner against slavery in Kansas, Emery was well-schooled on the subject of liberation.”
Sam Collins III, Galveston’s unofficial Juneteenth tourist ambassador, says, “Granger is simply one of the story’s many characters. He isn’t a terrific hero by any means. In actuality, he was not a supporter of enslaved people. Granger is said to have returned runaway slaves to slave states.”
Myth #3: General Gordon Granger read the Juneteenth Order to the people of Galveston from a balcony, proclaiming that “all slaves are free.”
According to Cotham, neither General Granger nor any of his staff ever read the order aloud in public. It would have been displayed around town, particularly in places where Black people congregated, such as Reedy Chapel-AME Church, dubbed “the Negro Church on Broadway” at the time. When the slavemaster summoned them all together and delivered them the news, the majority of the enslaved people in Texas learned about General Orders No. 3.
Myth #4: The Emancipation Proclamation was just a Texas version of the Juneteenth Order.
Fact: Although General Orders No. 3 stated unambiguously that “all slaves are free,” it also used patronizing language to satisfy planters who didn’t want to lose their labor. Enslaved persons were instructed to stay still and labor for forty-one words of a brief 93-word order.
