In 1862, in the Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln declared millions of enslaved people in the United States to be free. However, because word traveled slowly back then, and because many slave owners refused to obey the proclamation, Black people in deep Southern states, including Texas, continued to be held as slaves even after the Civil War ended in April 1865. Ten weeks after that war ended, Union Army Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, with 2,000 troops to occupy the state on behalf of the federal government and to enforce the conditions of the ConfederacyĆ...