Juneteenth: How Misinformation Shapes Our Past and Present

Image and article via Color of Change.org

This is what you’ve probably been told about Juneteenth: Enslaved Black people in Texas had no idea they were free until June 19, 1865, the day U.S. Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce the end of the Civil War and the freedom of enslaved Black people.

“Maybe there’s a grain of truth to it, but it’s not the whole truth,” says Evan Feeney, a deputy senior campaign director at Color Of Change. What we’ve been taught about Juneteenth is part of the “propaganda about the story of Blackness in America right now,” he says.

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