Champaign, Danville and Urbana to mark Juneteenth by celebrating Black freedom and families
Juneteenth marks the arrival of U.S. Army troops in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865. The troops told some of the last enslaved Americans that they were free. They were enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation, in which President Abraham Lincoln decreed some enslaved people to be free on January 1, 1863. (NPR) Many central Illinois communities…
