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Born ready, hun. Hi. Born ready. Hi. My name is Sherrell Daley. I am doing oral history on behalf of the Humanities Truck, for Shove Off Day. Today is May 25th, 2023. I am interviewing...

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This is Carl Adams. My name is Carl Adams. It's May 25th, actually. It is the day that the US colored troops were ordered to embark on ships to go to Galveston, Texas. They had no idea exactly when they were going or where they were going or even for certain why they were going, but they knew they were on an operation that was going to require the entire 25th US Colored Troops Army Corps. Two divisions totaling 20,000 men departed from City Point, Virginia, en route to Brownsville, Texas, but they ran into a storm, and the storm cost them five days of travel time. And then so they tried to re-land instead of Brownsville to Corpus Christi, Texas, but the storm followed them and they couldn't land there either. And so the ships were running out of coal and water, which steam ships absolutely require to stay afloat. And so then they went to the only point left for resupply and that was at Galveston, Texas and they pulled into Galveston Bay on June 18, 1865. And on the morning of June 19th, General Granger landed and he said, I found here this morning a full brigade of US colored troops that consisted of the 28th Indiana, the 29th Illinois, and the 31st New York of the Yankee Army at Galveston, Texas, and that was the beginning of Juneteenth, 1865. I am a member of the Abraham Lincoln Association, the Lincoln Group of D.C., the Civil War Roundtable, as well as the Illinois State Historical Society and I have served as the National Juneteenth Historian for the last five years or more. Thank you. Last question. What does Juneteenth mean to you? What does what? What does Juneteenth mean to you?

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Juneteenth means to me a basically, it is a phenomenon. It was not planned. It was not anticipated. It was just spontaneously arose from the people of Galveston, Texas. And as soon as it sunk in as to exactly what happened, they had never seen a colored troop before with guns and the enforcement authority to impose martial law, if necessary, in Texas. And they had never seen anything like that before and they thought they had all died and gone to heaven. In fact one man said we were all dancing on golden clouds Hallelujah. Okay, thank you so much for your time.