texas holiday for juneteenth. the texas state holiday occurred by an african-american representative by the name of al edwards of houston texas. he remembered as a kid growing up the celebration of juneteenth so he introduced a law that -- making that a paid holiday. there were only eight african-american legislators, black legislators in the legislature and this bill passed. and it was signed into law. and it went into effect june 13 1979. it was mainly here in the south where the celebration was -- you had major celebrations. today you have big celebrations in milwaukee. you have los angeles

washington, d.c., new york, san antonio. there are a lot of -- over 40 states and we've been told that they're at least five foreign countries that even celebrate the juneteenth emancipation day. this date is very important, because it showed that even though texas is a southern state, it had compassion for the african-americans' struggle of slavery. >> hello, everyone, and welcome i'm ian cooke of the smithsonian's national portrait gallery. here at the portrait gallery, it's an article of faith that every picture tells a story. this program series face to face exists to connect some of the thousands of stories that we have on hand and to make one step from story to history. our presenter today is jim barber, a historian here at the portrait gallery. jim has written and lectured

extensively on the civil war. he's finishing a new exhibition on babe ruth and he has given face to face talks on everyone from they will loanus munch to elmer elsworth. please welcome with a history of ira aldrich jim barber. [ applause ] >> again welcome toll the national portrait gallery. ira aldridge, we'll talk about a little bit right now and very appropriate for february's black history month. why ira aldridge? and with this face to face series we connect three different people throughout three consecutive months so that we began last month with pocahontas and this month is ira aldridge and the connection is, the thread back in 2007 the

state of virginia celebrated or commemorated two huge anniversaries, one the -- the older one being the 400th anniversary of the founding of jamestown. and the second anniversary was the 200th anniversary of the birth of robert e. lee. and one of the hardest things for anyone to do, teachers, historians, you name it, is to give a sense of time. so think back 2300 years if you can to robert e. lee's era. and then another 200 years back to jamestown. and that's hard to do. if someone just says, oh, you know 400 years ago. we just -- we can't really envision that so is thread is

jamestown. in 1619 -- it was founded in 1607 and in 1969 the first african-americans arrive at jamestown. now they're not slaves yet. they're for the most part indentured servants. slavery will begin a little bit later. but a lot of people wonder why did it take so long for slavery to end. well slavery was in existence for almost 200 years when robert e. lee is born in 1807. and slavery will end in about four short -- well, long years right at the end of the civil war. let's talk about ira aldridge. ira was not a slave. he was actually a free black. he was born in downtown

manhattan, new york city, in 1807. and along with ira aldridge, robert e. lee is going to shadow aldridge, so i'll mention lee throughout this too, as we go along. ira aldridge free black, not many opportunities for free blacks. one of the biggest challenges was just to stay out of the hands of kidnappers and to be taken back into slavery. ira would go to the free black school in downtown manhattan and that's where he really becomes introduced to the performing arts and theater. in a nutshell ira is known foremost as the great black african american