KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Students from Austin-East Magnet High School spent Wednesday evening decorating the Beck Center lawn ahead of Juneteenth.
Every year, students help the cultural center get ready for the holiday by displaying hundreds of flags and flowers meant to represent the thousands of people still enslaved in 1865, after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.
"It's very important to us to have these students understand the history, know the history and then tell the history. But as important, if not more so, is giving back," said Rev. Renee Kesler, the president of the Beck Center.
In 2021, President Joe Biden signed a bill recognizing Juneteenth as a federal holiday.
Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day or Freedom Day, commemorates the emancipation of the last remaining enslaved African Americans in the United States.
It recognizes the date of the executive decree announcement in Texas by the U.S. Army, which freed more than 250,000 African Americans who were the last to learn of their freedom on June 19, 1865, following the Civil War.
Although the Emancipation Proclamation was made effective in 1863, it could not be implemented in place under Confederate control, according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Texas was the westernmost Confederate state and enslaved Americans there did not learn they were free until around 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, announcing they were slaves no longer.