CA State Capitol Juneteenth honors U.S Colored Troops who enlisted from California

Our unique California Journey From Slavery to Freedom remains an “open secret” as the State of California still recognizes Juneteenth as a Day of Observance by statue and offers a quasi-optional Juneteenth Holiday, needing permission to utilize a floating personal holiday.

Few acknowledge the nearly 5,000 United States Colored Troops arrived at Port Galveston Island, Texas with General Gordon Granger to secure the border with Mexico, confiscate valuable cotton for the US Treasury and to go plantation by plantation enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation as the US Civil War came to close, according to Michael Harris, National Jineteenth Observance Foundation - Northern California Director.

The late Dr. Ronald Myers, founding President of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation, NJOF, and the late Hari Jones, a U.S. Marine, Civil War Scholar beyond compare introduced me to Frank Smith, visionary founder for the African American Civil War Museum that continues to blossom and guides our Juneteenth assignment to honor USCT who enlisted from California.

On June 19, 2025, our Title 5 US Federal Juneteenth Holiday, the public will be given the first opportunity to take a “sneak peek” at the Museum renovations across from the U Street USCT Monument, set to reopen amidst a grand celebration on Veteran’s Day, Nov. 11, 2025

That grand re-opening had been set for July 18, honoring the Anniversary of the Battle of Fort Wagner during which US Colored Troops proved themselves to be valiant fighters, winning wide respect and attracting thousands more soldiers into the Union Army and Union Navy.

The July 18, 2025 date had to be postponed after Congress cut federal funds from the District of Columbia budget; including money for construction on the museum project, which is costing about $45 million.

The cut funds will be recovered in August in time to complete the construction for the Veteran’s Day grand opening celebration.

Just across the street from the African American Civil War Museum, which is housed in the historic Grimke School building on Vermont Avenue North West, is the bronze memorial, a statue of three soldiers standing guard. The statue is surrounded by a wall with the carvings of 209,145 names of those who served among the United States Colored Troops.

Frank Smith says between Juneteenth and Veterans Day, “We’re going to read aloud the names of all 209,145 Black soldiers. We’re going to render them unto the universe. We’re using the names they used on the battlefield.”

That museum and memorial – fixtures in the U Street community for the past 21 years – are undergoing a $45 million expansion project that will accomplish the second purpose for which the museum was built.

Our Juneteenth celebrations of freedom across the nation will be followed by the July 18 celebration of the Battle of Fort Wagner, which will feature a film festival showing the movie, “Glory”, starring Denzel Washington, Smith says. Those two dates will represent the first two steps toward the grand opening.

The next step will be on September 22, a commemoration of the Battle of Antietam. It was after that historically bloody battle that President Abraham Lincoln first issued the Emancipation Proclamation demanding that the seceded states return to the Union by January 1 when the Proclamation went into full effect.

“Every one of these will be a steppingstone to flinging the doors wide open on Nov. 11, 2025,” Smith said.

The opening comes six years after the groundbreaking for the new museum during which Smith explained his vision for honoring the Black soldiers of the Civil War who literally fought themselves out of enslavement into freedom while preserving the Union.

“You all know that we started this African American Civil War Museum for two purposes – one was to correct a great wrong in history, which pretty much ignored the contributions of African-American soldiers ending slavery and keeping America united under one flag,” Dr. Frank Smith, executive director and founder of the African American Civil War Museum, told a packed house in D.C.’s historic Shaw neighborhood on Oct. 17, 2019.

Smith continued the brief history lesson before the rapt audience: “When the Civil War started, African-Americans had no pathway to citizenship in the United States. We were defined in the Constitution as being chattel slaves. And every court decision from that point up to the Civil War reinforced our position and our status in society.

We didn't get a chance to fight for our freedom until Lincoln gets himself caught up in a war that he can’t win without doing something about slavery. And so, he ended up enlisting overly two hundred thousand Blacks in the Union Army and US Navy. The nation paid no attention to these soldiers until we built a monument to them.