Marking Juneteenth

June 16, 2022

Members of the Rutgers Community:

Tomorrow, June 17, Rutgers will begin an annual practice of observing Juneteenth as a university holiday on the third Friday of June, which is also the observance of the state holiday.

Juneteenth, which is also known as Emancipation Day, marks the arrival of federal troops in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to announce that all enslaved people in that state—more than 250,000 at the time—were declared free. This was two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued, two months after the Civil War ended, and six months before ratification of the 13th Amendment officially ended slavery. Annual celebrations of this moment began the following year in Texas and soon spread among African Americans in other states. Texas declared Juneteenth a state holiday in 1980, and the federal government (and New Jersey) declared it a holiday last year.

I encourage you to read the Rutgers Today essays about the value of celebrating this day and thereby raising awareness of its significance in the history of our nation. As I wrote in my own essay, recognizing Juneteenth is “a somber act of remembrance; a declaration that this country should continue the hard work of becoming the beacon of liberty and righteous independence that it claims to be.” We at Rutgers join the state and federal governments in marking Juneteenth—and I hope it will be an occasion to reflect on the need to continue that hard work.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Holloway
President and University Professor