Dan Wood: The Eponymous Weblog

Dan Wood is co-owner of Karelia Software, creating programs for the Macintosh computer. He is the father of two kids, lives in the Bay Area of California USA, and prefers bicycles to cars. This site is his weblog, which mostly covers geeky topics like Macs and Mac Programming.

Useful Tidbits and Egotistical Musings from Dan Wood

Categories: Mac OS X · Cocoa Programming · General · All Categories

Fri, 21 May 2004

I had never heard of 'Juneteenth' before

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My wife was showing me some literature for a couple of upcoming 'Juneteenth' events in the San Francisco Bay Area. Neither of us had heard the term before; I figured it was something vaguely Shakespearean that occured on the something-teenth of June. But the literature we saw used the term as if it was a familiar day like Christmas or Labor Day.

I guess I'm an ignoramus because apparently it's been around for a long time. I found this on the history page at juneteenth.com:

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free.

Well, you learn something new every day. In any case, I'll be at our local festival in Alameda, California!