On June 19th, 1865 Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, arrived to Galveston, Texas announcing that the Civil War had finished and that the enslaved were free. June 19th or Juneteenth is the celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.
Juneteenth became a celebration for the formerly enslaved and their descendants for gathering, praying and remembering. Today, it commemorates African American freedom and it has become a national and international day of pride.
Black Seminoles gained their freedom before 1865 by fighting and escaping from Florida and Oklahoma to Mexico in the 1850s, when slavery had been abolished in the neighboring country. However, Juneteenth is celebrated in solidarity with the African American community and also as a symbolic remembrance of their own achievement of freedom. The celebration takes place in Brackettville, but perhaps the largest one is held in El Nacimiento de los Negros, Coahuila, where some of the descendants still reside under the name Mascogos.
