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