By Jutta Seibert

On Monday, June 19, the Villanova community, along with the United States, commemorates Juneteenth. The University added Juneteenth to its list of holidays in 2020 to allow staff, faculty, and students to observe this important day in the nation’s history with family and friends.

A portmanteau of the words June and nineteenth, Juneteenth references June 19, 1865, the day on which the news that all slaves are free reached Galveston, Texas. The Civil War had been effectively over for more than two months, but the news had not yet reached the far corners of the country. The following year African Americans in Texas began celebrating the end of slavery on June 19 of every year.

Juneteenth is also known as Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, (Black) Independence Day, and Jubilee Day.

Emancipation Day Celebration band, June 19, 1900, Texas. University of North Texas Libraries.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Not unexpectedly Texas was the first state to officially recognize Juneteenth as a holiday, first by proclamation in 1937 followed by legislation in 1979. Other states followed suit, among them Pennsylvania in 2019. On June 17, 2020, President Joseph Biden elevated Juneteenth to a federal holiday, one of only eleven, by signing the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law.

The University’s commitment to race and justice goes well beyond recognizing Juneteenth as an important holiday. In 2020 Aequitas, the Presidential Task Force on Race began to assess the racial climate on campus. One of the measures proposed by the task force was a university-wide required course on race and justice, which is currently piloted on campus.

Another noteworthy initiative is the Rooted Project that aims to explore the University’s historical ties to slavery, segregation, and institutionalized racism, among others, and to educate the community about issues of race and justice.

Join Falvey staff in commemorating and celebrating this special day!

For those still looking for an inspiring read for this summer, here are some suggestions:

• Strait, Kevin Michael Angelo, and Kinshasha Conwill. Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2023.
  Unfortunately, the Library’s copy is already checked out but consider a ticket for the exhibition of the same name at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
• Etoke, Nathalie. Black Existential Freedom. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2023.
  “Black Existential Freedom looks at the ways in which Black cultural productions reflect a constant struggle for freedom and a refusal to surrender to the destructive forces of dehumanization.”
• Manjapra, Kris. Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation. New York: Scribner, 2022.
  “Black Ghost of Empire focuses on emancipation and how this opportunity to make right further codified the racial caste system-instead of obliterating it.” In case you missed it, Manjapra recently spoke on campus.
• Davis, Thulani. The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022.
  “Thulani Davis provides a sweeping rethinking of Reconstruction by tracing how the four million people newly freed from bondage created political organizations and connections that mobilized communities across the South.”
• Ray, Victor. On Critical Race Theory: Why It Matters and Why You Should Care. New York: Random House, 2022.
• Mills, Charles W. The Racial Contract. 25th anniversary ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022.
  “The Racial Contract puts classic Western social contract theory, deadpan, to extraordinary radical use. With a sweeping look at the European expansionism and racism of the last five hundred years, Charles W. Mills demonstrates how this peculiar and unacknowledged ‘contract’ has shaped a system of global European domination.”
• Givens, Terri E. The Roots of Racism: The Politics of White Supremacy in the US and Europe. Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2022.
• DeSalle, Rob, and Ian Tattersall. Understanding Race. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
• Gates, Henry Louis, Jr, and Andrew S. Curran. Who’s Black and Why? A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-century Invention of Race. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 2022.

Jutta Seibert is Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement at Falvey Library.

By Jutta Seibert

General Order No. 3, June 19, 1865
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

June 19, 1865 marks the end of slavery in Texas. On this day Major General Gordon Granger of the Union Army occupied Texas on behalf of the federal government and upon arrival on Galveston Island publicly read General Order No. 3 which began with this sentence: “The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”

While slaves in the Confederate states were theoretically freed on January 1, 1863 with President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, solely those in Union-occupied areas and those who fled to the North became de facto free. For most slaves in the South slavery ended only after the Union won and even then, close to six weeks passed before the news reached the outer fringes of the nation. June 19 is commemorated as the day on which the last slaves were freed despite the fact that slavery persisted in some pockets of the country until the Thirteenth Amendment took effect on December 18, 1865.

On the first anniversary of Granger’s reading of General Order No. 3 Texan freedmen began celebrating what was then called Jubilee Day. Early festivities included political rallies besides music and food. Celebrations waxed and waned over the years but the longest-running African American holiday continues to this day. June 19 or Juneteenth evolved over time into America’s second Independence Day. In 1980 Texas, befittingly, became the first state to adopt Juneteenth as a state-wide holiday. Other states followed suite and most states now recognize Juneteenth as a state holiday or ceremonial holiday. There are efforts underway to make Juneteenth a national holiday.

Commemorate Juneteenth by exploring African American history. We recommend the following collections:

• African American Communities (Adam Matthew Digital)
  Contains a wide variety of primary sources that document African American community life from the second half of the 19th century with a focus on Atlanta, Chicago, Brooklyn, and North Carolina.
• African American Newspapers: The 19th Century (Accessible Archives)
  Provides access to the digital archives of the major 19th century African American newspapers.
• African American Studies Center (Oxford University Press)
  Offers a a selection of information sources ranging from the authoritative Encyclopedia of African American History to the African American National Biography project.
• American Slavery Collection (Readex)
  Features digital copies of a wide variety of primary sources on the history of slavery and abolition from the American Antiquarian Society.
• Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1938 – Texas (Library of Congress)
  Transcripts of interviews with former slaves from Texas.
• Black Abolitionist Papers (ProQuest)
  Features newspapers articles, manuscripts, letters, pamphlets, and books written by African Americans actively involved in the movement to end slavery in the United States between 1830 and 1865.
• Black Authors, 1556-1922 (Readex)
  Contains digital copies of works by African and African-American authors housed in the archives of the Library Company of Philadelphia.
• Black Historical Newspapers (ProQuest)
  Offers access to the major African American newspapers of the 20th century.
• Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice (Adam Matthew Digital)
  Contains digital copies of manuscripts, court documents, pamphlets, books, paintings, and maps from 1490 to 2007.

Jutta Seibert is Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement at Falvey Memorial Library.