In January 1865, Congress finally proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution for national abolition of slavery.

They spread across the South among newly freed African American slaves and their descendants and became more commercialized in the 1920s and 1930s, often centering on a food festival.

[16] As early festivals received news coverage, Janice Hume and Noah Arceneaux consider that they "served to assimilate African-American memories within the dominant 'American story'".

[19] Traditions include public readings of the Emancipation Proclamation which promised freedom, singing traditional songs such as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "Lift Every Voice and Sing", and reading of works by noted African-American writers, such as Ralph Ellison and Maya Angelou.

[18] Celebrations include picnics, rodeos, street fairs, cookouts, family reunions, park parties, historical reenactments, blues festivals, and Miss Juneteenth contests.

Karen M. Thomas wrote in Emerge that "community leaders have latched on to [Juneteenth] to help instill a sense of heritage and pride in black youth."

In Tourism Review International, Anne Donovan and Karen DeBres write that "Barbecue is the centerpiece of most Juneteenth celebrations.

"[25] Major news networks host specials and marathons on national outlets featuring prominent Black voices.

[26] The Black Seminoles of Nacimiento in Mexico hold a festival and reunion, known as el Día de los Negros on June 19.

[30] On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln announced that the Emancipation Proclamation would go into effect on January 1, 1863, promising freedom to enslaved people in all of the rebellious parts of Southern states of the Confederacy including Texas.

Texas, as the most remote state of the former Confederacy, had seen an expansion of slavery because the presence of Union troops was low as the American Civil War ended; thus, the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation had been slow and inconsistent there prior to Granger's order.

[9] Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in the midst of the Civil War on September 22, 1862, declaring that if the rebels did not end the fighting and rejoin the Union, all enslaved people in the Confederacy would be freed on the first day of the year.

[36] On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all enslaved people in the Confederate States of America in rebellion and not in Union hands were freed.

[9] On the morning of June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived on the island of Galveston[38] to take command of the more than 2,000 federal troops recently landed in the department of Texas to enforce the emancipation of its enslaved population and oversee Reconstruction, nullifying all laws passed within Texas during the war by Confederate lawmakers.

All indications are that copies of the Ordinance were posted in public places, including the Negro Church on Broadway, since renamed Reedy Chapel A.M.E.

[43] Although this event commemorates the end of slavery, emancipation for the remaining enslaved in two Union border states, Delaware and Kentucky, would not come until December 6, 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified;[44][c][e] furthermore, thousands of black slaves were not freed until after the Reconstruction Treaties of late 1866, when tribes such as the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, and others were forced to sign new treaties that required them to free their slaves.

[44] That year, Black leaders in Texas raised $1,000 for the purchase of 10 acres (4 ha) of land, today known as Houston's Emancipation Park, to celebrate Juneteenth.

From 1890 to 1908, Texas and all former Confederate states passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disenfranchised Black people, excluding them from the political process.

[54] Gladys L. Knight writes the decline in celebration was in part because "upwardly mobile blacks ... were ashamed of their slave past and aspired to assimilate into mainstream culture.

[12] The Great Depression forced many Black people off farms and into the cities to find work, where they had difficulty taking the day off to celebrate.

[55] From 1940 through 1970, in the second wave of the Great Migration, more than five million Black people left Texas, Louisiana and other parts of the South for the North and the West Coast.

As historian Isabel Wilkerson writes, "The people from Texas took Juneteenth Day to Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, and other places they went.

Ralph Abernathy, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference made June 19 the "Solidarity Day of the Poor People's Campaign.

The same year, he hosted the inaugural Al Edwards prayer breakfast and commemorative celebration on the grounds of the 1859 home, Ashton Villa.

"[16] In 1994, a group of community leaders gathered at Christian Unity Baptist Church in New Orleans to work for greater national celebration of Juneteenth.

[97] In the yearlong aftermath of the murder of George Floyd that occurred on May 25, 2020, nine states designated Juneteenth a paid holiday,[98] including New York, Washington, and Virginia.

For decades, activists and congress members (led by many African Americans) proposed legislation, advocated for, and built support for state and national observances.

[125] President Donald Trump, during his 2020 campaign for reelection, added making the day a national holiday part of his "Platinum Plan for Black America.

[133] In January 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs in federal agencies that has been interpreted by various agencies as eliminating in-agency observance planning for a number of cultural remembrance events, including Juneteenth, Black History Month, and several others.

Nonetheless, for February 2025, Trump issued the traditional presidential proclamation calling on officials to commemorate Black History Month.