How well can you spot a Juneteenth lie?
Each quote below contains one or more errors. How many can you find?
These quotes were obtained from websites controlled by the identified entities. Links were not provided because if you leave class to visit the sources you might become distracted and forget to return. Web addresses are listed in the bibliography of Juneteenth University’s textbook: Juneteenth 101 – Popular Myths and Forgotten Facts.
1
June 19, 1865: General Order No. 3 ended slavery in Texas two months after Blacks were emancipated in the Union.
University of Texas at Austin
Correction
States in the Union began outlawing slavery in July 1777. Emancipation in Texas began ten weeks after the Civil War ended. Slavery remained lawful in Texas prior to the war’s end because the state had succeeded from the Union and was no longer subject its laws.
2
5 facts about Juneteenth which marks the last day of slavery.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Correction
Juneteenth was not the last day of lawful slavery in the United States. Therein, Juneteenth does not “mark” the last day of slavery.
3
Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger marched his soldiers to Galveston, Texas to spread the word that slavery had ended in America.
Fox News
Correction
Granger’s soldiers traveled from Virginia to Galveston by boat, with brief stops in Alabama and Louisiana.
4
On Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, freeing those enslaved.”
CNN
Correction
The Emancipation Proclamation applied only to 2/3’s of the slave-holding states. Slavery elsewhere remained legal.
5
Though President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, news traveled slowly from Washington, D.C., to the southern states. More than two years later, on June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger stood on the Ashton Villa balcony in Galveston, Texas, to deliver the belated message of the then-deceased President: all slaves were free.
Donald J. Trump (2017)
Correction
News of the Emancipation Proclamation reached all states simultaneously via telegraph from the United States War Department.
6
For more than 130 years, Juneteenth National Freedom Day has been the oldest and only African American holiday observance in the United States.
Nebraska Legislature (2009)
Correction
Watchnight is the oldest continuous commemoration of emancipation. Black communities in other states celebrated the dates of their own emancipations.
7
The Black power movement of the late 1960’s also helped resurrect the day as something of a new Fourth of July, naming it Juneteenth and celebrating with parades, barbecues, fireworks, speeches and even readings of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Politico
Correction
Juneteenth celebrations began a century before the Black Power movement emerged.
8
There are no longer any slaves in the United States. All persons heretofore held as such became free by virtue of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, commonly known as the Emancipation Proclamation.
Maj. Gen. Francis J. Herron, United States Army (1865)
Correction
The Emancipation Proclamation was applicable to ten of the fifteen slave-holding states. Also, none of the ten affected states voluntarily complied with the proclamation.
9
Today is the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Denison Daily Cresset, June 19, 1877
Correction
The anniversary of the proclamation is January 1 not June 19.
10
Celebrating the abolition of slavery in the United States of America and the park where the world’s Juneteenth celebrations began!
EmancipationUSA (2019 – Houston, Texas)
Correction
This description was issued in Houston. The first celebration of emancipation in Houston happened on June 20, 1866 – one day after Galveston’s celebration.