Flags for Juneteenth celebrations at First Horizon Stadium on June 21, 2025 in Cary, North Carolina. —Grant Halverson—Getty ImagesFreedom in the United States has always arrived in stages, declared in one space and denied or delayed in another. Such was the reality for formerly enslaved Texans who learned of their emancipation in 1865, two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation and the same year …