On June 19, 1865, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger led a force of soldiers in Galveston, Texas, to deliver a message that “the Civil War was over, and they had the man power to enforce the end of slavery.
” The Union won and slavery was to end. Unlike today, information could not be transmitted instantly by satellite. President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation earlier, yet slaves in Texas were still in bondage.
Plantation owners did not want to free their slaves and many did not inform them of their rights to freedom. As information made its way into the Confederate state, slaves tried to gain freedom, yet many were stopped, beaten and some killed as they tried to flee. By law, if a slave chose to remain on the plantation, their former master was obligated to pay them wages, just as they would any employee.
That was not popular and landowners fought back. That was why armed forces were sent in by the government to enforce emancipation. Those who were allowed to go, left to find their family members who had been sold to other masters, some to other states.
But remembering the day they were freed became an important day in their calendar. Former slaves hosted memorials and informal celebrations began, which were not favorably embraced by landowners. Groups of freed men would try to gather back in Galveston annually on June 19 for their “family reunions” and to mark grave sites, but white citizens banned them from any public gathering.
In 1872, a number of.
