Beyond Granger: Honoring the Black soldiers who enforced freedom on Juneteenth

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

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Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

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Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

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June 19, 2026

Victoria Mejicanos, Afro

Dr. Hillary Green is the James B. Duke professor of Africana Studies at Davidson College.
Credit: Courtesy Photo

Discussions regarding Juneteenth often center on Union General Gordon Granger and his reading of General Order No. 3, but less attention is paid to Black soldiers who were with him in Galveston, Texas, helping enforce the end of slavery.

Historians who spoke with the AFRO say that by June 19, 1865, many of the Black Union troops had already been through brutal combat, racist treatment, unequal pay and were still navigating those conditions even after white soldiers were allowed to return home.

Dr. Hilary Green, the James B. Duke professor of Africana Studies at Davidson College, shared that many of the Black soldiers stationed in Texas wanted to return home, sending petitions to Washington, D.C. She also outlined the treatment they were facing.

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