In a statement released today on their official Twitter account, the Detroit Lions formally announced their recognition and observance of Juneteenth as a permanent organizational holiday.
Juneteenth, also called Freedom Day, commemorates the ending of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger and his Union soldiers landed in Galveston, Texas, with federal orders that all enslaved peoples were now free.
This was two and a half years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation formally freed slaves, but the defeat of the Confederate states and the arrival of Union soldiers in the South meant that the orders could finally be enforced.