Early celebrations date back to 1866, at first involving church-centered community gatherings in Texas. They spread across\u00a0the South<\/a>\u00a0amongst newly freed African American slaves and their descendants and became more commercialized in the 1920s and 1930s, often centering on a\u00a0food festival<\/a>. Participants in the\u00a0Great Migration<\/a>\u00a0brought these celebrations to the rest of the country. During the\u00a0Civil Rights Movement<\/a>\u00a0of the 1960s, these celebrations were eclipsed by the\u00a0nonviolent<\/a>\u00a0determination to achieve civil rights, but grew in popularity again in the 1970s with a focus on African-American freedom and\u00a0African-American arts<\/a>. Beginning with Texas by proclamation in 1938, and by legislation in 1979, every\u00a0U.S. state<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0District of Columbia<\/a> has formally recognized the holiday in some way.” (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Juneteenth<\/a>)<\/p>\n The Family History Guide has some great resources for helping you to find helpful information about enslaved ancestors. Check out Goal 4: Slavery Resources<\/a> *which also has QUIKLinks to record collections) and Goal 5: Breaking through Barriers<\/a>, in the African American Project. You can find this Project at the bottom of the Countries menu, in the Ethnic section.<\/p>\n “Juneteenth” will be celebrated on June 19 this year. Here’s a helpful introduction to this American national holiday, from Wikipedia: “Juneteenth, officially\u00a0Juneteenth National Independence Day, is a\u00a0federal holiday\u00a0in the\u00a0United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorate the\u00a0ending\u00a0of\u00a0slavery in the United States. The holiday’s name is a\u00a0portmanteau\u00a0of the words “June” and “nineteenth”, as it was on June 19,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[155,356,88],"tags":[428],"class_list":["post-10152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-records","category-research","category-the-family-history-guide-association","tag-african-american-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thefhguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thefhguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thefhguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefhguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefhguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10152"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefhguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10156,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefhguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10152\/revisions\/10156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefhguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thefhguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefhguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefhguide.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thefhguide.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/x-afr-fre.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"