On June 19, 1865, in downtown Galveston, Texas, US Army Major General Gordon Granger posted “General Order No. 3.” It officially informed Texans about the end of the Civil War and the end of slavery. Everyone in Texas knew about the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln almost three years earlier, but it had been ignored. Those days, Granger now made clear, were over. Granger’s order said, “This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.” The date, June 19, became known as Juneteenth, first in Texas, and then throughout the country. It was first recognized as a federal holiday in 2021.
That year, on the very spot where the order was first promulgated, a Houston artist named Reginald Adams, working with a group of other artists, created a 5,000 square foot mural commemorating and celebrating the day. If you’re familiar with Galveston, the mural is on the side of the Old Galveston Square building at 22nd Street and the Strand.
“The history of Juneteenth has always been there since the moment General Granger and those soldiers occupied Galveston,” Adams told Texas Monthly while he was finishing the mural. A state historical marker has been at the site since 2014, “but it took the artwork to put a face on that history, an identity that now creates entirely new conversations, entirely new curiosity around what happened on that date.”
Since then, Adams has created an organization called the Absolute Equality Public Art Initiative to foster a greater understanding of the holiday. Last year the group created new murals in Miami and Shreveport. Today, they’re unveiling six more in Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Houston, and a second one in Miami. All are focused on Juneteenth, freedom, and equality. “Public art is transformative,” Adams says. “With a few gallons of paint and a whole lot of passion, we’ve transformed a blank wall into a cultural landmark.” Murals like these are “a powerful way to spread the story of Juneteenth and celebrate the contributions of African Americans to American history and culture.”
Adams knows that if art can help spread that story, it’s going to have to go where people can encounter it. “Most of the kids in our inner city don’t visit traditional art spaces,” he said. “They don’t go to the Museum of Fine Arts. ...I saw public art as a clear, easy, accessible path to bringing art for [those] who would never otherwise maybe have access.” I’ve never heard that phrased better.