Primary Sources: Everything You Know About Juneteenth Is Wrong

Learn the facts behind America's newest holiday before the whitewashed version of Juneteenth becomes an official, government-approved origin story.

(Envato.com)

Instead of untold stories from Black history, ContrabandCamp’s Primary Sources series shares pure, uncut and rarely told stories from the past straight from the primary source.

Some stories don’t need whitewashing.

As America celebrates its real Independence Day, you are sure to hear the whitewashed version of the Juneteenth story:

On June 18, 1865, Union Army General Gordon Granger and 2,000 troops arrived at Galveston to occupy the state of Texas after the last troops of the Confederacy surrendered. The next day, on June 19, Granger read the proclamation he authored, “General Order No. 3,” announcing the total emancipation of those held as slaves:

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 employer and hired labor.

By order of Major General Granger

F.W. Emery

Major A.A. Genl.

Upon finding out that they were free, the newly emancipated Americans burst into song and celebration, knowing that America’s constitutionally enforced, race-based system of chattel slavery was finally over. A scant 100 years later, Joe Biden signed the bill designating Juneteenth as a national holiday, celebrating the end of slavery.

There’s just one thing missing from the story:

Facts.

As with most things, history is a little more complicated than that. Here are some historical facts about Juneteenth that you should know:

Gen. Gordon Granger didn’t really do anything

While Granger’s role in Juneteenth has become legendary, in reality, he played a tiny part in this historical event. Although Granger proved to be a very capable military leader, his contemporaries almost unanimously considered him to be not very bright. Even his handwriting was terrible. Not only did he graduate 35th in his West Point class of 41 cadets, but two of his high-achieving schoolmates — William Sherman and Ulysses Grant— dissed him every chance they got. Despite his accomplishments in the line of duty, Granger was relieved of his duties in 1864.

But the Army had to do something with Granger. After the war was over, the War Department assigned him to head the Texas district, pairing him with a bright and capable staff officer, Major Frederick Emery, a radical abolitionist from a family of anti-slavery activists with exceptional handwriting.

That’s who wrote the Juneteenth order.

According to Edward Cotham Jr., Emery was not just responsible for including the words “absolute equality” and “all slaves are free” in the Juneteenth order; it was literally in his handwriting. Some historians believe Emery might have even delivered the actual words to some of the enslaved.

To be fair, even if Granger didn’t write General Order No. 3 or read it aloud, he probably would’ve still been Blackfamous. Had he kept his position, perhaps Granger would have been in charge of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the greatest annual HBCU event would have been called the “Granger University Homecoming.” Instead, Granger went to Texas and was replaced by the general whose name would become part of Black history, all because of General Order 144:

“Maj. Gen. G. Granger is relieved from command of the Fourth Army Corps, and Maj. Gen. O. O. Howard is assigned in his stead.”

General Order No. 3 didn’t actually do anything

When the order stated that “all slaves are free,” noting that it was “in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States,” they were referring to the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Emancipation Proclamation did not free “all slaves.”

Many legal scholars think the proclamation was actually unconstitutional. Others say Lincoln taking property from what was essentially another country (the Confederate States of America) was akin to Donald Trump telling Mexico to pay for a wall. Even if it was legal, it still didn’t free all slaves. Slaveholders in territories not under Union control and in border states like Delaware were still allowed to rape, whip and steal labor from Black people:

"on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

Texas was under Union control, so it technically applied to Galveston. But the Order didn’t free anyone; Granger was essentially a process server.

There was no big Emancipation announcement exposing a secret

I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but there was no Army town crier who gathered the human chattel around a veranda to reveal that their masters had been hiding the secret of their emancipation. The Army mostly just put the general order in the newspaper and on trees and posts around town.

Texas was so remote that many of the slaveholders didn’t know they were under Union control until they found out about General Order No. 3. Still, the notion that white people were able to keep a secret from every single enslaved person is as absurd a notion as a white mind has ever concocted. The truth is that most of the enslaved heard about their freedom from their masters. If you need proof that enslaved people knew they were free, here’s an article from the June 14, 1865, edition of the Galveston Daily News, five days before the original Juneteenth.