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Five-year-old George Gillette’s life changed forever on June 19—Juneteenth—1865 when 2,000 Federal soldiers under the command of Major General Gordan Granger arrived in Galveston, and Granger issued General Order No. 3, which stated "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”

Granger’s men marched through Galveston reading the proclamation, and the news spread quickly through the approximately 250,000 enslaved people in Texas, including Gillette, formerly enslaved by Ashbel Smith at his Goose Creek plantation.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation technically abolished slavery in the Confederate states in 1863, and slavery wasn’t officially abolished until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865, Juneteenth marks the date when the last enslaved people in the United States were effectively set free.

Formerly enslaved Texans began honoring Juneteenth the following year, both as a celebration of their freedom and an opportunity for political activism and voter registration during Reconstruction. In Houston, Emancipation Park, the city’s oldest public park, was founded in 1872 to make sure Black Houstonians would always have a place to celebrate Juneteenth.

Nothing is known about how Gillette and his family celebrated their first Juneteenth, but they stayed in the Goose Creek area. Gillette eventually received an acre of land nearby, where he farmed and raised horses for the rest of his life.