THE United States marked “Juneteenth” today with reflection on the end of slavery amid efforts in the country to stop its history from being taught in state schools.

The national holiday commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they had been freed.

This came two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln during the country’s bloody civil war.

While many have treated the long holiday weekend as a reason for a party, others urged quiet reflection on the United States’ often violent and oppressive treatment of black people. 

Others have pointed to the irony of celebrating a federal holiday marking the end of slavery across the nation while some states are curbing the teaching of its history.

“Is #Juneteenth the only federal holiday that some states have banned the teaching of its history and significance?” author Michelle Duster asked on Twitter this weekend, referring to measures in Florida, Oklahoma and Alabama prohibiting the teaching of certain concepts of race and racism.

John Thorne, executive director of the Detroit Catholic Pastoral Alliance, told the congregation at Gesu Catholic Church in Detroit on Sunday: “In order to have justice we must work for peace. And in order to have peace we must work for justice.”

He added that Juneteenth is a day of celebration, but it also “has to be much more.”

Memphis is home to the National Civil Rights Museum located at the site of the old Lorraine Motel, where the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr was murdered in April 1968. 

Ryan Jones, the museum’s associate curator, said Juneteenth should be celebrated in the US with the same emphasis that July 4 receives as Independence Day.

He said: “It is the independence of a people that were forced to endure oppression and discrimination based on the colour of their skin.”