The City of Reading hosted a ceremony and flag-raising Friday afternoon to recognize Juneteenth. Roughly 100 people gathered in front of Reading City Hall as community leaders and elected officials addressed the crowd.
Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865, when union soldiers reached Galveston, Texas – the furthest point in the south – with news of the end of the Civil War. Slaves were previously unaware they had been freed more than two years earlier when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, or that Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered in Virginia two months earlier.
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