Here’s when slavery actually ended in the U.S.

Plus: Inside the mind of the world's greatest art thief |

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By Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Juneteenth on Monday, June 19, is supposed to commemorate the day in 1865 when enslaved men and women in Texas found out they were free. The date also offers an opportunity for Americans to reflect on the racial progress that has—and hasn’t—been made since the end of the Civil War. But there are misconceptions about the history behind this anniversary. For example, some enslaved Texans were not freed that day and would have to wait six more months, when the states ratified the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. TIME talked to longtime Texas history professor Daina Ramey Berry to set the record straight on these myths and misunderstandings about the end of slavery in the U.S. Berry points out that even the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t lead to widespread freedom. Click here to read why. And for a Juneteenth reading list, check out the TIME.com articles below: –Simmone Shah outlines what to know about the order that was supposed to free enslaved Texans. —Janell Ross explains how generations of Black families have passed down the history of the holiday. —Kermit Roosevelt compares and contrasts the histories of July 4 and Juneteenth, arguing, “Juneteenth expresses our values far better than does the Fourth of July.”

HISTORY ON TIME.COM 6 Essential Cormac McCarthy Books By Annabel Gutterman, Cady Lang and Lucas Wittmann From 'The Road' to 'No Country for Old Men' Read More » Holocaust Survivors Will Receive Another $1.4 Billion From Germany in 2024 By Kirsten Grieshaber / AP The compensation, negotiated with Germany's finance ministry, includes funds to provide Holocaust survivors with home care and support services. Read More » Learning to Tell My Mother’s War Story By Luis Alberto Urrea Novelist Luis Alberto Urrea on tracing his mother's journey through Europe during World War 2 Read More » How to Steal a Masterpiece: Advice from the World's Greatest Art Thief By Michael Finkel Advice from the world's greatest art thief Read More » Column: The Revolutionary Power of Girl Talk By Mattie Kahn How conversations between women shaped America's feminist movements. Read More »

FROM THE TIME VAULT This week in 1953: Mickey Mantle “Baseball fans are still talking about the historic homer Mickey hit in Washington this spring. The 565-ft. hit, the first that ever carried over Washington's centerfield wall, was the longest home run ever measured (TIME. April 27). It sent sportswriters scurrying to the records, trying to compare it with some of [Babe] Ruth's reported (but unmeasured) 600-footers. Like Ruth. Mickey hits towering homers. Like Ted Williams, he smacks crackling line drives. Like [Joe] DiMaggio. he beats out hot-to-handle grounders if an infielder makes a split-second bobble. Blessed with a sprinter's speed—he has been clocked at 3.1 seconds traveling the 90 feet to first base —he is one of the fastest men in baseball.” (June 15, 1953) Read More » This week in 1970: Mike Nichols “Until Catch-22, Nichols’ demur would have been as hollow as his hits. Abruptly, he has supplied his own defense. The film, he claims, perhaps too extravagantly, has ‘helped me discover how I want to live—I’m going to get rid of myself in stages.’ In any case the film has apparently made him demand more of himself professionally. Says Nichols, ‘It’s come clear that you have to make your own statement. I’m well aware of the separation between what you say and do. But it has to be begun, so all I’m really saying is, ‘Let’s begin.’” (June 15, 1970) Read More » This week in 2004: Ronald Reagan “Hope is an infectious disease, and Reagan was a carrier. The country he courted and finally won over in 1980 was a dispirited place, humiliated abroad, uncertain at home, with a hunger for heroes but little faith that they could make any difference. But you can, he told us. I am not the hero, you are. ‘Let us renew our faith and our hope,’ he declared in his first Inaugural Address. ‘We have every right to dream heroic dreams.’ And he would serve as Dreamer in Chief. ‘What I’d really like to do,” he said after six months in the White House, ‘is go down in history as the President who made Americans believe in themselves again.’” (June 14, 2004) Read More »

100 Years of TIME The origins of the red border TIME’s Creative Director D.W. Pine on what it’s like to design the magazine’s cover Read More »

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