Juneteenth Flag Raising to be Hosted by Mayor Bobby Sanchez and City Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities

New Britain Mayor Bobby Sanchez (D) and the City Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities is planning its annual Juneteenth Flag Raising celebration.

The event, on Thursday, June 18th, is to be at Central Park at 2:00pm.

Juneteenth is a national celebration of the end of slavery, won by force of arms in the struggle against pro-slavery forces in the Civil War.

The Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect on January 1, 1863, freed millions of the people who had been held in slavery in states rebelling against the United States during the Civil War. Slavery was later abolished nationwide on December 6, 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

According to the National Archives,

After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

But, as the National Museum of African American History and Culture, has said, when the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863,

not everyone in Confederate territory would immediately be free. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was made effective in 1863, it could not be implemented in places still under Confederate control. As a result, in the westernmost Confederate state of Texas, enslaved people would not be free until much later. Freedom finally came on June 19, 1865, when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas. The army announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state, were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as “Juneteenth,” by the newly freed people in Texas.