Juneteenth, also known as Jubilee Day, marks the anniversary of June 19, 1865, when enslaved Texans finally learned they were free. At last, nearly two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation and two months after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered, every part of the country was officially notified and informed that the Union army would enforce the law.
Data from that period and today helps tell the story of Texas, slavery, and inequality. This analysis relies on Social Explorer’s library including historical Census data, American Community Survey data, and USDA Census of Agriculture data.
Slavery Data in Texas and the Nation:
Social Explorer has every decade of the US Census available in both maps and reports. Data on slavery were included in the very first Census of 1790, and from then on through the 1860 Census.
Nationally, the enslaved share of the population declined steadily from 17.8% in 1790 to 12.6% in 1860, but the regional differences were stark. While some parts of the country had already ended slavery, it was growing in other areas, especially places like Texas.
Texas became a state in 1845 and was first counted in the 1850 Census. Texas's total population nearly tripled between 1850 and 1860, driven by the rapid migration of slaveholders from older Southern states like Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. The enslaved population more than tripled from 58,161 to 182,566 in that same decade. By 1860, 30.2% of Texas’ population were enslaved, reflecting the state's rapid expansion as a cotton-producing and sugar-producing slave economy. (The Texas slave population would grow to even higher numbers in the next few years, which occurred between census counts.)
Social Explorer brings together historical data across different surveys and years to illustrate change and empower discoveries. The following set of maps compare the US slave population in 1850 and 1860. Zoom in to explore different parts of Texas and the rest of the US to see the shifts up close.
Literacy Gaps:
A few years after slavery ended, 1870 Census data on literacy rates and education highlighted gaps in access and attainment. White Americans had literacy rates of 91.5% in the US and 87.4% in Texas. At the time, the Census categorized race as “White” and "Colored" (primarily formerly enslaved Black Americans). The “Colored” population had extremely low literacy rates of 42.8% nationally and 40.6% in Texas — a direct consequence of the anti-literacy laws that had made it illegal to teach enslaved people to read or write.
Farm-Ownership Patterns Then and Now:
A few decades after slavery ended, farm ownership data from the 1910 Census show the gulf between white-owned farms and black-owned farms. Texas had 417,770 total farms. White farmers owned 50.5% of their own farms, and 89.2% of all owner-operated farms. Black and other non-white farmers were overwhelmingly tenants: only 30.4% owned their farms, while 69.6% were tenants, concentrated in the sharecropper and cash-tenant system that defined post-Reconstruction Southern agriculture.
Examining farming industry data from a century later shows some gains in ownership but also continued dominance of white farms. The detailed USDA Census of Agriculture is available in Social Explorer for 2017 and other years. According to the survey, Black Texans ran 8,011 farms–over a quarter of all Black-owned farms in the US at the time. Black farmers in Texas fully owned 5,529 farms or 69% of those operations (and partly owned an additional 1,891 farms). The proportion of Black farmers owning their operations in Texas is higher than the national rate (69% compared with 66.1% for the US). Texas is also the state with the biggest acreage of Black-owned farms (946,751 acres). However, White-owned farms command an overwhelming share of territory, making up 125,261,769 acres of Texas farmland–over 132 times more than Black-owned farmland.
The data and history tell the story of gains amidst entrenched obstacles that have impeded the growth of Black farming from the Reconstruction Era to today. To begin to address a history of discriminatory lending practices, the USDA distributed $2 billion in financial assistance to over 43,000 farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners.
For more on farming, the Census of Agriculture has extensive data on farm ownership, acreage, and more detailed characteristics about America’s farms, farmers, and production.
Juneteenth Celebrations Today:
Juneteenth was declared a federal holiday in 2021, but had already spread from Texas to other parts of the nation. Over the years, Juneteenth became more popular and nationally recognized, as people have migrated around the country and the Civil Rights movement grew. The following maps show where Black Americans lived from post-slavery 1870 and the most recent ACS. Explore the maps to see more details on Black American communities in Texas and around the country.
Analyze More Historical and Contemporary Data with Social Explorer:
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(Image from Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, The New York Public Library. "Agriculture" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1939.)