Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States on the anniversary of Major General Gordon Granger’s order to free enslaved African Americans in 1865.
Kibibi Mack-Shelton, program coordinator of Africana Studies at UCF, spoke with Ivanhoe Newswire to share lesser-known facts about the holiday. “It’s important, especially today, but it was important in the past because you’re talking about a group of people who were in a society, but they were not of the society because they were enslaved,” she says.