Experence
As I sat down to begin writing this month's blog entry, it was June 19th. This is the first year that this day is a National Holiday in the United States. This day has been called Juneteenth for many years, but I must admit that even though I studied history in college, the idea of Juneteenth and what it represented never made it into any of the lectures I heard or the textbooks I read. As a result, when I taught American History, my students never heard of Juneteeth. Here is an explanation that I recently read..."On June 19, 1865, U.S. Army Major General Gordon Granger traveled to Galveston, Texas, to announce that slavery had ended. At the time, many enslaved African Americans were unaware that Congress had passed the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, months earlier. The day of Granger's announcement is now known as "Juneteenth," "Emancipation Day" and "Juneteenth Independence Day."" For far too long, the reality of sla