EUGENE, Ore. — It’s a celebration of freedom and blackness as the second annual Juneteenth Gathering is set to get underway at the Farmer’s Market Pavilion in Eugene on Thursday, June 19.
Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021 but first became a legal holiday in 1980, in the state where it has the deepest roots: Texas.
In Galveston, during the American Civil War, the last slaves were freed by Union troops on June 19, 1865, more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in states that had previously refused to do so…