Don’t miss Gordon-Reed’s discussion with Lisa Baldez about her research process, her childhood in Texas, and the circuitous path to national recognition of the Juneteenth holiday.Īnnette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. In “On Juneteenth” she writes, “it is staggering that there is no date commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.” Yet Texas, the last state to free its slaves, has long acknowledged the date of June 19, 1865, when US Major General Gordon Granger proclaimed from his Galveston headquarters that slavery was no longer the law of the land.
The Texas native combines her own scholarship with a personal and intimate reflection of an overlooked holiday that has suddenly taken on new significance. “On Juneteenth” presents the saga of a frontier defined as much by the slave plantation owner as the mythic cowboy, rancher, or oilman.Ĭelebrated for her research and revelations in her prize-winning book “The Hemingses of Monticello”, Annette Gordon-Reed now tells a tale closer to home. For this Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning historian, also a proud Texas native and descendant of Texas slaves, the story of Juneteenth has special resonance.
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