Did you know the U.S. military helped create the Juneteenth holiday?  One of the federal government’s first attacks on slavery during the war was an “Act to Secure Freedom to All Persons Within the Territories of the United States,” passed on June 19, 1862.  Exactly three years later, Gen. Gordon Granger would sail into Galveston, Texas, to read the Emancipation Proclamation to the people of Texas.  The day would become known as “Juneteenth” and would be celebrated as a holiday — a second independence day — for former slaves.  On June 19, 1865, Granger read the words written by Abraham Lincoln in 1862. Texas was the last state in the defeated Confederacy to hear them. On June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed legislation making Juneteenth a federal holiday, commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. It’s the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created in 1983.  Learn more at https://www.military.com/off-duty/how-us-military-helped-create-juneteenth-holiday.html Artwork: https://mutopejjohnson.blogspot.com/