Juneteenth

General Order No. 3 did more than announce freedom. The rest of the order turned former masters into employers and told the freed to stay at their homes and work for wages. They were not to gather at military posts, and the army would not support them in idleness. Gordon Granger, given command of Texas on June 10, 1865, reached Galveston on June 19 and spent six weeks carrying the message inland. The Freedmen's Bureau was not yet set up in Texas, and the news reached some 250,000 enslaved people plantation by plantation.

What the plaque says

Juneteenth Commemorated annually on June 19th, Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration of the end of slavery in the U.S. the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on Sep. 22, 1862, announced, "that on the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all persons held as slaves within any state…in rebellion against the U.S. shall be then, thenceforward and forever free." However, it would take the Civil War and passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution to end the brutal institution of African American slavery. After the Civil War ended in April 1865 most slaves in Texas were still unaware of their freedom. This began to change when Union troops arrived in Galveston. Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, Commanding Officer, District of Texas, from his headquarters in the Osterman Building (Strand and 22nd St.), read "General Order No. 3" on June 19, 1865. The order stated "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." With this notice, Reconstruction Era Texas began. Freed African Americans observed "Emancipation Day," as it was first known, as early as 1866 in Galveston. As community gatherings grew across Texas, celebrations included parades, prayer, singing, and readings of the proclamation. In the mid-20th century, community celebrations gave way to more private commemorations. A re-emergence of public observance helped Juneteenth become a state holiday in 1979. Initially observed in Texas, this landmark event's legacy is evident today by worldwide commemorations that celebrate freedom and the triumph of the human spirit. (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Strand — steps away
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — steps away
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 0.5 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.
• Moody Mansion — 0.6 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.

More markers nearby

• The Stewart Building — steps away
• Leon & H. Blum Co. Building — steps away
• Battle of Galveston — steps away
• Mardi Gras in Galveston — steps away