Had a hard time finding a "J", but I learned about a new holiday!

Juneteenth:

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration of the ending of slavery. Dating back to 1865, it was on
June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas
with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a
half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation - which had become official January 1,
1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of
Union troops to enforce the new Executive order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of
1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence
and overcome the resistance.

Later attempts to explain this two and a half year delay in the receipt of this important news have
yielded several versions that have been handed down through the years. Often told is the story of a
messenger who was murdered on his way to Texas with the news of freedom. Another, is that the
news was deliberately withheld by the enslavers to maintain the labor force on the plantations. And
still another, is that federal troops actually waited for the slave owners to reap the benefits of one last
cotton harvest before going to Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. All or none of them
could be true. For whatever the reason, conditions in Texas remained status quo well beyond what
was statutory.