Steven Otfinoski - The Story of Juneteenth: An Interactive History Adventure

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YOU live in a nation divided by war. The end of the Civil War, in 1865, brings an end to slavery in the United States. The defeated southern states are ordered to release all slaves. How will they handle their freedom? What choices would you make?

In this book youll explore how the choices people made meant the difference between life and death. The events youll experience happened to real people.

Chapter One sets the scene. Then you choose which path to read. Follow the links at the bottom of each page as you read the stories. The decisions you make will change your outcome. After you finish one path, go back and read the others for new perspectives and more adventures. Use your device's back buttons or page navigation to jump back to your last choice.

YOU CHOOSE the path you take through history.

Free at last! April 9, 1865, was a historic day in American history. Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union general Ulysses S. Grant at a farmhouse in the small Virginia settlement of Appomattox Court House. The long Civil War that divided America was coming to an end. Slavery, one major cause of the war, was in the United States.

Southern owners had to free their slaves by order of the federal government. However, slavery did not end everywhere. Texas, the most western of the Confederate states, was removed from much of the fighting. Many slave owners in Texas refused to release their slaves.

On June 19, 1865, Texas slaves learned of their freedom. In the following years, many began to make their way north, looking for new lives.

The federal government sent General Gordon Granger to Texas with 2,000 troops to enforce . Granger arrived in the city of Galveston on June 18, 1865, placing the city and the state under military occupation.

The next day, June 19, Granger read General Order No. 3, calling for the freeing of all slaves. Slave owners had no choice but to comply with the law.

Gordon Granger read General Order No. 3, mandating freedom to slaves and an absolute equality between former masters and slaves.

Freed at last, former slaves danced in the streets of Galveston. For them June 19 became as important as the day the war ended. It came to be called Juneteenth.

The newly freed people responded in different ways to their newfound freedom. Some followed the orders recommendation to stay on the plantations as hired workers for the same masters they served as slaves.

Others left their plantations looking for jobs in the area. Still others headed to larger towns and cities, which they hoped would offer them better opportunities. Some young blacks, including children, agreed to work as on plantations run by former slave owners.

Though slavery was abolished, prejudice and against blacks continued. Many southern whites resented the newly freed people. They were afraid the former slaves would take their jobs. Whites created laws called Black Codes to restrict their progress. Racist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, formed in 1866, terrorized and murdered many black people.

Not all white southerners were opposed to black emancipation. Some southerners and many northerners worked for the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, (the Freedmens Bureau), created in 1865. Its agents helped blacks find jobs, obtain homes and land, and get an education. Lawyers working for the Bureau often defended the rights of freed blacks in court when they were arrested unfairly for breaking Black Codes.

You are one of the newly freed people in Texas who celebrate your freedom on Juneteenth. What will you do now that you are free? Where will you go? What job will you seek? What goals will you pursue? The decision is yours.

It is June 19, 1865, in the city of Galveston, Texas. The long, bloody Civil War has been over for nearly two months. The South has lost to the North. But for you, a young black man on a plantation outside the city, little has changed. You are still a slave.

Today the slave cabins are buzzing with news. Yesterday federal troops arrived in Galveston to take over the city. What this will mean to you and thousands of other slaves in Texas, you dont yet know.

Your master, Mr. James, asks you and Samyour friend and fellow slaveto go into town to buy supplies.

Freed blacks headed for Union territory after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Texas slaves wouldn't learn of the freedom for two more years.

You and Sam hitch up the horse to the wagon and head into Galveston. When you arrive you find the city in an uproar. There are throngs of people in the streets, along with federal soldiers in dark blue uniforms.

You quickly do your business at the store. When you come back out, you see a large crowd gathered around the Ashton Villa, a big brick house on 23rd Street and Broadway. You ask a white man standing nearby whats going on. That blasted Yankee General Granger is about to speak, he says.

A loud murmur goes through the crowd as a soldier with a full beard steps out onto the balcony of the Ashton Villa.

That must be old Granger, says Sam.

The crowd grows silent as General Granger begins to read from a paper in his hand. Your ears tingle when he reads the words:

The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.

Ashton Villa, site of General Granger's reading of the proclamation, was the first brick house to be built in Texas.

You cant believe what youre hearing. Slaves around you, young and old, are dancing, singing, and laughing in the street. You and Sam join in.

Were free! Sam says, sinking to his knees in disbelief. Free to go wherever we want!

Yes! you cry. Just as soon as we get these supplies back to Masters house.

Forget him, says Sam. Were not his slaves anymore.

What Sam says is true, but you feel you should take the supplies back. And anyway, you want to say good-bye to the other slaves.

I think we should take the supplies back, you tell Sam.

Lets leave them at the store with a message for Master, Sam says, Then we can take off in the wagon. Think of the places we can go.