Juneteenth is also called Freedom Day.
On June 19, 1865 Union Army General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston to tell slave owners they had to release their slaves.
"He made the mandate of forcing Texas to comply with the Emancipation Proclamation,” former Dallas Cowboy legend Greg Ellis said.
It was two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves but Texas wouldn't comply.
“The problem was they didn't have enough Union soldiers present in the State of Texas to force Texas to comply with the Emancipation Proclamation,” said Ellis.
Ellis wrote a play about Juneteenth.
He says it's raw and it's real about what happened during that time.
"Texas slave owners were known to kill those former slaves as they were leaving, beat them, hanged them, lynched them and did all sorts of things to them because they were that set against releasing their slaves,” said Ellis.
Ellis says even when the slaves were free, many had nowhere to go. He says the lasting effects of slavery are felt to this day.
“We have been, for hundreds of years, forced to settle and to pursue a subpar American dream,” said Ellis.
Ellis is now working with the NFL and other groups to make Juneteenth a national holiday.
He says for African Americans it's the real day of freedom, not the 4th of July.
"For slaves in 1865, that's the Freedom Day not 1776, because slaves were still slaves,” said Ellis.
He said the nation is at a turning point in history in the aftermath of George Floyd's death, and it's time for Black Americans to be free from the bondage of systemic racism.
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