Agenda - 06-01-2021; 4-b - Resolution Supporting Juneteenth 2021

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RES-2021-035 3 ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS Resolution Supporting Juneteenth 2021 WHEREAS, Juneteenth is a celebration of the date, June 19, 1865, when people who were enslaved in Texas were informed that the US government had officially outlawed the brutal practice of slavery, three years prior with the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation; and WHEREAS, the Emancipation Proclamation issued on January 1, 1863 declared that the people who were enslaved in Confederate-controlled areas were officially free people (state action was used to abolish slavery in areas controlled by Union forces with the exceptions of Kentucky and Delaware where slavery was finally ended by the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865); and WHEREAS, isolated from both Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War, Texas had become a refuge for those who wished to continue the practice of holding human beings as property; and WHEREAS, since the capture of New Orleans in 1862, people who held human beings as property in Mississippi, Louisiana and other points east had been migrating to Texas to escape the Union Army's reach and more than 150,000 people held in bondage had been moved to Texas; and the White people of Texas actively worked to ensure that the people held in bondage, who should have been freed in 1863, did not hear of the freedom granted by the Emancipation Proclamation; and WHEREAS, although the Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863, there were still a total of 250,000 people held as human chattel in Texas when U.S. Army General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas and on June 19, 1865 — Juneteenth — proclaimed the war had ended and so had the captivity of people who had been enslaved; and WHEREAS, the following is the text of the official recorded version of the order: "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere."; and WHEREAS, although news of emancipation came at different times during that Texas summer and autumn 1865, African Americans in Texas started to celebrate the freedom of enslaved persons on June 19 (Juneteenth) as their day of celebration; and WHEREAS, beginning in 1866, they held parades, barbecues, and gave speeches in remembrance of their liberation. The oldest of the surviving formerly enslaved people were often given a place of honor and Black Texans initially used these gatherings to attempt to locate family members from whom they had been separated and soon these events became staging areas for family reunions and an opportunity to uplift each other as they moved through hostile environments; and