Juneteenth, officially
Juneteenth National Independence Day, is a federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States. The holiday's name is a portmanteau of the words "June" and "nineteenth", as it was on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War. In the Civil War period, slavery came to an end in various areas of the United States at different times. In January 1865, Congress finally proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution for national abolition of slavery. By June 1865, almost all enslaved were freed by the Union Army, or abolition laws in some of the remaining U.S. states. When the national abolition amendment was ratified in December, the remaining enslaved in Delaware and in Kentucky were freed.