Today marks the 30th anniversary of Juneteenth as an official holiday in Iowa observed each June 19th. Local historian Mike Zahs shares the history of the day that goes back to 1865, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, “Some of the southern slave owners kept that information from people in Texas because they were still needing the slaves there for harvesting and things. So, the slaves in Texas did not know they were free until after the Civil War. There were battles in Texas clear up until June of 1865, two months, over two months after the Civil War ended. And when finally those battles were all stopped, the slaves found out that they were free and it was on June 19th, and that’s where the ‘Juneteenth’ comes from.”

Zahs says in 1860 the United States had four million slaves. Iowa, a new state during the Civil War, was greatly involved in the war with 1 in 10 citizens directly involved as soldiers, nurses, and other support measures. Locally many men served as 90-day men, planting their crops and then going to war for 90 days before returning to harvest crops.

According to Zahs, Iowa and Washington County specifically was a welcoming place, “My family is here because one of my ancestors was a freed slave and he married a white woman, and the only state that that was legal in was Iowa. Otherwise he would’ve been put in prison [in] other places. So a number of mixed-race families settled in Iowa because we were very open to that. Also, Washington County was one of the first two places in our country that allowed black children to go to school with white children on the same level. So, we’ve been very, very important in the Civil War and the events that followed.”

Zahs says the traditional way to recognize the day is to have a barbeque, and all but four states mark Juneteenth as an official holiday.