The Washington Post

staff

For the Washington Post

JUNETEENTHMASS

for The Washington Post

Juneteenth - Washington, DC

Estelle T Barada, a historic re-enactor who portrays Duchess Quamino

Grilled Hot Links With Chow-Chow for Juneteenth story in Voraciously

for the Washington Post

Capitol Hill Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson 

Red Drink recipes for a story on Juneteenth in Voraciously

For The Washington Post

Juneteenth 2021 Cover Image Illustration by Temi Coker

Walmart Stores Ahead Of Earnings Figures

Bloomberg

Nicole A. Taylor is the author of Watermelon and Red Birds: A Cookbook for Juneteenth and Black Celebrations. 

handout

NY-City Workers-Juneteenth

Juneteenth States

gender-juneteenth-nl

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Commanders will start a new era with a palatable 2024 schedule

The 26 best new restaurants in the D.C. area

The new dining reality: Smaller groups and shorter weeks

Miss Manners: Co-worker lies to avoid doing her job

Ask Amy: I’m scared of my adult stepson who keeps losing his temper

Carolyn Hax: Fiancé plans to have a baby with someone else

Putin hails Russia’s ties with China as ‘stabilizing’ force in the world

Who is Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister who was shot?

Middle East conflict live updates: U.S.-built pier anchored in Gaza;  ICJ due to hear arguments on Rafah

Cruise settles with person dragged under one of its robotaxis

Senators studied AI for a year. Critics call the result ‘pathetic.’

 Key Senate matchups set for November in Maryland, West Virginia

Biden and Trump agree to CNN debate in June, ABC faceoff in September

The incomprehensible, unattainable scale of Trump’s deportation plan

Puppy abandoned with heart-rending note is adopted, named Minerva

Man, 91, shocks tiny firehouse with $500K gift: ‘Nobody knew how much I’d saved’

Retired cop meets abandoned baby he helped 23 years ago: ‘What are the odds?’

Look to the cloud to protect the life documents saved on your computer

Can you spot bad financial advice on TikTok? Take our quiz.

5 myths about Social Security as the program faces a funding crisis

Netflix will air NFL’s Christmas games, a major step for streaming service

Sam Feist, longtime CNN executive, will become CEO of C-SPAN

Michael Cohen testimony ties Donald Trump to hush money payment

Best Places to Work in the Federal Government 2023

How America tried and failed to stay White

When budget flights actually make good budget sense

Cruise ships to return to Baltimore two months after bridge collapse 

Some cruise prices are about to get a little more clear

The Post’s choices in Northern Virginia’s U.S. House primaries

States see legalized sports betting as a tax windfall — but at what cost?

Haiti’s plight is a case study in the ‘responsibility to protect’

Trump trial live updates: Michael Cohen testifies about past lies in hush money case

Minh Connors

An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that Lee Glazer's title is director of the National Archives. She is director of museum programs. This article has been corrected. 

For the second year, thousands of people marked Juneteenth by queuing outside the National Archive’s East Side Rotunda Gallery to catch a glimpse of the rarely exhibited Emancipation Proclamation and General Order No. 3., which informed enslaved Black people in Texas of their freedom in 1865, and gave rise to the holiday.

Two of the most influential documents that discuss the freedom of enslaved Black people in the United States are so fragile that the National Archives normally keeps them in a high-security climate-controlled vault with limited light for preservation. But that could change soon. On<b> </b>Saturday, Colleen Shogan, the Archivist of the United States, announced a plan to display the Emancipation Proclamation and General Order No. 3 permanently.

Shogan said they belong with other foundational documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, which are on permanent display in the Charters of Freedom Rotunda at the Archives.

“It’s critically important because it’s an addition to the Charters of Freedom and helps us tell a much more comprehensive story,” she said. “It’s important for all Americans to see a reflection of themselves in American History.”

She did not give a date, saying the timing will depend on when the archivists complete their research on preservation.

Inside the East Side Rotunda, Beth Short, 45 and Laura Short, 44, stood with their daughter Ada, 7, peering over the Emancipation Proclamation, which was enclosed in a glass climate-controlled case with a wooden base. The Shorts pointed to parts of the document while Ada’s curious wide eyes followed along.

Ada asked about the importance of Juneteenth. Her parents explained it the best way she could comprehend. Beth Short said later that it is key for children to learn history during their foundational years even if the conversation is uncomfortable in the current polarized political climate.

“There have been struggles of equality and continued struggles that are present and it’s connected. If we don’t have those conversations, we’re just going to repeat them,” Short said.

Garrett Osumah, 47, stood behind his small young sons as they gazed over General Order No. 3, which was enclosed in a glass case. Even before they got to the Archives, Osumah said, he had given his sons a pop quiz on the documents and the history of slavery during their 22-mile ride from their home in Fairfax.

As a Black father, Osumah said he chooses to educate rather than shield his sons from racism in America. He believes his sons need to know how slavery started, how early Americans built a system to perpetuate it despite declarations of equality and freedom, and how that history relates to the present.

“We have three young Black men,” he said. “They need to understand that these things happened in the world and it’s not just back in the 1800s. These types of things are happening now.”

President Abraham Lincoln issued the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation" target=_blank>Emancipation Proclamation</a> on Jan. 1, 1863. It declared that “all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states are free, but exempted large swaths of territory and came with stipulations for the enslaved.

Juneteenth — a combination of the words June and nineteenth — has been celebrated for decades by Black communities as Emancipation Day. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/06/15/juneteenth-federal-holiday-history-celebrations/">Here’s how it’s celebrated and which states observe the holiday</a>.

The Hall of Presidents and First Ladies features a complete wax collection of American Presidents and first ladies. It opened in 1957 but recently closed and will be auctioning off the collection on January 14, 2017. 

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/interactive/2021/juneteenth-history-texas-emancipation-photos" target=_blank>What is the history behind Juneteenth?</a> On June 19, 1865, Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Tex. — two months after the Civil War had ended — to deliver the belated news of freedom to enslaved Black people in Texas.

Over 100 years later, the celebration of freedom continues. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/06/02/washington-dc-juneteenth-events/" target=_blank>Here are the 15 best Juneteenth events across the D.C. area</a>.

The freedom it promised was contingent on a Union victory. The declaration applied in 10 Confederate states, leaving more than half a million Black people enslaved in parts of the Confederacy and in loyal border states. Although it did not end slavery in every corner of the country, “it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war,” according to the National Archives.

Two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, on June 19, 1865, enslaved Black people in Galveston, Tex., were finally informed of their freedom through General Order No. 3, which stated “that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”

Unlike the nation’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation was not written on parchment, which is more durable. As a result, the document is extremely delicate and has been damaged over the years because of  significant exposure to light, according to Lee Glazer, director of museum programs at the National Archives. General Order No. 3 is in slightly better condition because it has been in storage for decades and had not been on display until last year. But it was also not written on parchment, making it very fragile.

While Glazer supports plans for a permanent exhibit, she also feels the timing of the annual display the past two years offered its own kind of symmetry. “Exhibiting them together over Juneteenth weekend was a good way to launch a celebration of freedom and equality culminating with the Fourth of July,” she said.

Some visitors needed a moment after seeing the documents.

Stepping away from the glass cases, Jonathan Massaquoi, 37, sat on a bench with his one-year-old curly haired son Miles on his lap, while his wife held Zora, 3, sporting a purple shirt with the names Sojourner, Phyllis and Frederick in bold white letters.

Massaquoi said as he looked at the Emancipation Proclamation, the realization that he wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for these documents traveled through his mind. “I’ve never seen these types of documents in person,” he said.<b> </b>“These are the kind of things that truly change people’s lives in the moment.”

The exhibit opened Saturday and will be open until Monday at 7 p.m.

National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Award 2022

National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Award 2021

Roosevelt University, BA in Journalism

Indiana University, MS in Journalism

Samantha Latson is an intern on The Washington Post's Metro desk covering crime and is a Bradlee Fellow.  In 2022, she was a Ida B. Wells Fellow on the Investigative Team at The Post. She was also a reporter for the Unforgotten 51 project that examined the largely unsolved cases of 51 mostly African American women murdered in Chicago since 2001.

Samantha  Latson

washpost

For Juneteenth, D.C. visitors get a rare view of Emancipation Proclamation

the-washington-post

The District

Maryland

Virginia

Crime & Public Safety

Local Education

Obituaries

Transportation

Capital Weather Gang

D.C., Md. & Va.

Fast, informative and written just for locals. Get The 7 DMV newsletter in your inbox every weekday morning.

The Washington Post offers breaking local news, weather and traffic information for the DC, Maryland and Virginia metro areas, plus information about school districts, crime, government, religion, the lottery,restaurant reviews and obituaries.

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/national&limit=20

National

The Washington Post's national news coverage. Get the latest national news, featuring national security, science and the courts. Read breaking national news headlines from across the U.S.