Missouri City Juneteenth Celebration Foundation

        Juneteenth is the oldest known commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States, and the Emancipation Proclamation.

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      On June 19, 1865, 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.

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     Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021, when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston lead the effort to get the bill passed.