Gordon Granger took command of the Department of Texas on June 10, 1865, and reached Galveston on June 19. The order he issued there was General Order No. 3 because it was the third of his command, and his aide F. W. Emery wrote it into the district's order book, which National Archives staff found in Washington in 2020. It begins with the news: "all slaves are free," with "an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves." Then it turns. The tie between them "becomes that between employer and hired labor," and the freed were advised to "remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages." They were told they would not be allowed to collect at military posts or be supported in idleness.
Plantation by plantation
In 1860 Brazoria County counted 5,110 enslaved people, 2,027 white residents and six free Black residents. The lower Brazos and Colorado held the greatest concentration of large slave plantations in Texas, and Granger took his message inland for six weeks. The Freedmen's Bureau did not begin work in Texas until late September 1865. A few owners angrily told the freed to leave at once, but most asked them to stay and work for wages. David G. Mills lost 313 people to emancipation.
Brazoria County remembers Lew, enslaved on the Mims place on the San Bernard River. After he ran away, he was punished with iron horns riveted around his neck. When he learned in June 1865 that he was free, a friend cut the rivet with a chisel and sledgehammer, and the horns were later found buried at the foot of a tree. Natalie Wright-Moore Clark, a descendant of Robert Wright, has said that not everyone on the Levi Jordan plantation survived emancipation.
Making the day their own
The first documented emancipation celebration in Galveston came on January 1, 1866, the anniversary of Lincoln's proclamation. Newspaper accounts put 800 to 1,000 people on the march from the courthouse to Reedy Chapel. Its lot had been bought in 1848 for the city's enslaved Methodists, and after the war the congregation joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The first broad celebrations were political rallies that taught freed people about voting. City authorities pushed some to the edge of town, and Black groups raised money to buy ground of their own, often called Emancipation Park. A deed for ten acres in Houston was signed in 1872, and the Texas Historical Commission marker there names Jack Yates, Elias Dibble, Richard Brock and Richard Allen as leaders in buying the site for $800. In West Columbia, Charlie Brown, born enslaved and unable to read or write, is credited by a 2015 Texas House resolution with beginning a Juneteenth celebration. In 1979 Texas made June 19 a state holiday.
You can start at Reedy Chapel A.M.E. Church on Broadway. The lawn at Ashton Villa hosts Galveston's annual reading of the order. In Brazoria County, Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site has marked Juneteenth with readings of General Order No. 3.