BY ANITA STIEFEL MANAGING EDITOR

EAST ALABAMA — Several events are planned to celebrate Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. Also called Emancipation Day, Juneteenth was originally celebrated in Texas on the day that Black people there first learned they were no longer slaves. In 1863, as the nation was consumed by the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed more than three million enslaved people living in the Confederate states. It took more than two years, however, for the news to reach African Americans living in Texas. It was not until Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, that the state’s residents finally learned slavery had been abolished. The formerly enslaved immediatel

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