Juneteenth 2024: An RTM News Series

Finding freedom in a place known as the land of the free. On Jan. 1, 1863, Union soldiers entered plantations in the American South to announce the end of slavery by reading the Emancipation Proclamation. But freedom would not become a reality for thousands of Black people who remained in bondage two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
The Confederate state of Texas would only relinquish the horrid system of slavery after Gen. Gordon Granger, along with over 2,000 Union soldiers, marched