On June 19, 1865, Union troops under General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, the last state in the Confederacy where emancipation was enforced, and announced that all enslaved people were free. The Emancipation Proclamation had been issued on January 1, 1863, but the Civil War kept it from being enforced across much of the South for months or years. A year later, people in several Texas towns held the first Jubilee Day celebrations, with barbecues, music, prayer services, parades and rodeos. Because Black Texans were often barred from public land, many communities bought their own grounds, such as Houston's Emancipation Park, bought in 1872 by a group led by the formerly enslaved minister Jack Yates. The holiday spread across the country in the late nineteenth century, faded in the mid-twentieth century and revived strongly in recent decades.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.