Description: On June 19, 1865 — over 2 years after President Lincoln declared all enslaved persons free — Major General Gordon Granger and Union Army troops marched to Galveston, Texas, to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation and free the last enslaved Black Americans in Texas. Known to some as the country's “second Independence Day,” Juneteenth is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the emancipation of African-American slaves and celebrating African-American culture.