To the Editor:

Things I didn’t know about Juneteenth. I am 84 years old and this is the first I had heard of it.

I read on the internet [in a blog referenced on the Health & Medicine Policy Research Group website] by Stacy Conradt that on “June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger (accompanied by approximately 1,800 federal troops,) rode into Galveston, Texas, formerly part of the Confederate States of America, to take over the state and enforce Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation from 1863 and announced enslaved people were now free.”

Now that is strange the rest of the nation knew that enslaved people were free on Jan 1, 1863, more than two-and-a-half years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Why were they not told? Did news travel so slow back in those days? Or did they just didn't want them to know?

The Confederacy consisted of the Democratic Party, which held and supported the keeping of slaves. These were mostly in the South. The Republican Party was in the North. The Republican party was started for only one reason: to abolish slavery and end it. 

I have voted Democrat, Republican, or any party that had the best person (or so I thought) running. After what I’ve read, I may never vote Democrat again. Have they changed? ...

Everything above I read from history written on the internet or books, either I didn’t pay attention in history class or it wasn’t taught. 

Shirley Milbert

Delmar