Americans have celebrated Juneteenth as a federal holiday every June 19 since 2021.
Although the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on Jan. 1, 1863, it was another two and a half years before news of freedom traveled throughout the South.
“It takes the arrival of Union forces in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, for the enslaved people to have the assurance of freedom or even be aware that they have been freed,” said Prof. Paul Reeve.
Reeve is a historian and the chair of the University of Utah’s Mormon Studies Initiative.
He said slavery was part of Utah’s story from the time the first Latter-day Saints arrived in 1847. In fact, three enslaved men were sent ahead of the church’s president, Brigham Young, and his group to prepare for the pioneers’ arrival.
“Slavery arrives with the vanguard group of Latter-day Saints in the Salt Lake Valley,” Reeve said. “There are also forms of indigenous slavery taking place that Latter-day Saints are also drawn into pretty quickly after their arrival.”
He estimated dozens of people were enslaved at any given time in the early years of the Utah Territory.
In 1852, lawmakers in the territory passed a law granting some rights to enslaved people, but it didn’t free anyone.
Legally, freedom came sooner to the West than to the Confederacy. Congress passed a law in 1862 banning polygamy and slavery in U.S. territories, but polygamy attracted much more attention in Utah. Reeve says historians have found only a small announcement about the end of slavery buried in the Deseret News.
“As historians, it’s really difficult to ferret out when do enslaved people learn that they have been freed in Utah Territory,” he said. “It’s very possible that they may have had to have waited until the end of the Civil War in 1865, the passage of the 13th Amendment in December of 1865, even though the legal end to slavery in Utah would have been June 20, 1862.”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a history of racist policies: Young barred Black members from priesthood and temple privileges, a ban that remained in place until 1978.
In 2020, late church president Russell Nelson called on members to oppose racism and prejudice.
