Two and a Half Years

Quick answer: What happened on June 19, 1865?

On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston, Texas, with about 2,000 Union soldiers and had General Order No. 3 read aloud, enforcing freedom for some 250,000 enslaved people in Texas. It came two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect and two months after Appomattox.

Many Americans think slavery ended with the Emancipation Proclamation, or with Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Neither is true. The Proclamation took effect January 1, 1863, freeing more than three million people on paper. Texas sat far from the armies that gave the paper force, and slaveholders from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama drove enslaved people there to keep holding them. By spring 1865, about 250,000 people were enslaved in Texas. On June 19, Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston with about 2,000 soldiers. A clerk had written General Order No. 3 by hand in a bound army book, between orders about pickets and horses. Soldiers read it aloud at the customs house, from balconies, and on street corners, because there was no faster way. John then follows Opal Lee, a Fort Worth teacher who, beginning in her late eighties, walked two and a half miles at a stretch, one half-mile per year the news ran late, until the holiday passed in 2021.

Why it matters for leaders: Freedom on paper only becomes real when someone carries the word to the people still waiting for it.

Q: Why was slavery still practiced in Texas in 1865?

A: Texas was far from Union armies, and slaveholders from other states had driven enslaved people there to keep holding them.

Q: Who is Opal Lee?

A: A retired Fort Worth teacher called the grandmother of Juneteenth, who walked two and a half miles at a stretch toward Washington; she stood beside the President when the 2021 bill was signed.

Read the full essay on Substack → https://heroespath.substack.com/p/two-and-a-half-years

By John Fenzel, founder and CEO of Heroes' Path Foundation