“Juneteenth on Friday celebrates the official end of slavery in the United States, when Union soldiers arrived in Texas on June 19, 1865 — more than two years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation — to share the news that the Civil War was over and that slaves were freed.
And while Juneteenth has its roots in Texas, the celebration has a long, storied history in Colorado.
It began with Otha P. Rice, a Denver businessman who was born in Texas, according to the Denver Public Library. Rice had moved to Denver with his family when he was a child and graduated from Manual High School in 1934.”
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Osborne, Ryan. Channel 7 News 18 June 2020.