Texans @HoustonTexans are celebrating Juneteenth as an organizational holiday on Friday along with several other NFL teams. The league has also made it a staff holiday #JUNETEENTH2020
— Aaron Wilson (@AaronWilson_NFL) June 16, 2020
The Houston Texans are celebrating Juneteenth as a team holiday, as are other NFL teams.
According to Aaron Wilson of the Houston Chronicle, the NFL has also made June 19 a staff holiday.
The holiday commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. Although president Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation two years prior, there was a reluctance in the state of Texas to announce the abolition of slavery.
On June 19, 1965, almost two months after the end of the Civil War, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston to enforce Lincoln’s mandate.
According to Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy, although a Black man, because he grew up in Michigan, he didn’t find out about the holiday until he was an adult when he was exposed to other players who grew up in the South.
When I got to college many of my football teammates from Texas talked about celebrating this event growing up, so I had to do some research. As I talked to them and did some studying on the origin of the holiday, I learned that June 19, 1865, was when enslaved people in Texas finally got the announcement that they were free.
My first reaction upon hearing this was sadness. The proclamation from the White House had been given almost two-and-a-half years earlier. Why did it take so long for those African Americans in Texas to hear about their freedom?
Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker says that Juneteenth 2020 will be “very, very special” to him and his family.
“It became really big to me when I played in the South,” Baker said. “I think it will mean more to people after all of the problems that we have going on.”
With the Texans being one of several NFL teams to celebrate Juneteenth, it is a commitment on the organization’s part to listen.