Jordan Rich filled in on NightSide:

On June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas, Major General Gordon Granger, a US Army officer and Union General during the Civil War, announced that all slaves were free. This news came two years after President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation which declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." Jordan welcomed Peter Drummey, Chief Historian and Stephen T. Riley Librarian for the Massachusetts Historical Society, to expand upon the history of Juneteenth.