Juneteenth

I was a grown man, about 25 years old and visiting Texas for the first time when I heard about this holiday or day of rememberance that is observed by African-Americans all over the South and maybe in a few places in the Northeast where I'm from...

June 19 - Juneteenth or Emancipation Day is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the U.S. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. 

These slaves didn't realize that they'd actually been "Free" since 1863 when President Lincoln signed the Emancipation proclamation and deemed that all of the slaves held in the rebel states were technically free...

Of course there was no radio or telephone or television then and I doubt that newspapersfrom the North were getting through and of course the slave owners were not going to tell them,so they had no way of knowing...

There was no Facebook or Twitter either,so nobody could get a tweet orselfie from their cousin in New York or Philly asking them if they were "Free" yet...