History, Memory and Identity in the Summer of 2020
Juneteenth
In September of 1862, in the middle of the American Civil War, President Lincoln issued an executive order known as The Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation freed all enslaved people in the rebelling southern states once they were outside the control of the Confederate government by the advance of Union soldiers. It went into effect on the first of January 1863 roughly half way between the beginning and end of the war.
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