A cabalgada during the Juneteenth celebration in the village of Nacimiento de los Negros, México.

The first official national “Juneteenth” celebration in the United States is also focusing attention on the amazing story on the Black Americans who found freedom in México. NBC’s Suzanne Gamboa last week explored the details, and we have an excerpt.

Rather than staying at home in Texas where Juneteenth was first celebrated, Corina Torralba Harrington goes to her birthplace, Nacimiento de los Negros in México, where her ancestors built a community long before slavery fully ended in the United States.

Celebrating Juneteenth in Texas as the day when Union Gen. Gordon Granger declared slaves had been freed is “not our celebration really, because our people freed themselves,” she said, referring to her Black Seminole ancestors, known as Negros Mascogos in México.

They found freedom more than a decade earlier than its enforcement in Texas July 19, 1865. In her Mexican hometown, June 19 is El Baile de los Negros (The Dance of the Blacks) or El Día del Negro (The Day of the Black).

After escaping plantations in Georgia and North Carolina, many Black Seminoles joined in fighting with Native Americans against the U.S. in the Seminole Wars. When the U.S. prevailed, it removed the Black Seminoles with Native Americans to Indian Territory, what is now Oklahoma.

Still facing the threat of being returned to slavery, John Horse led a group of Black Seminoles and Native Americans on another treacherous journey from Oklahoma to Mexico, where slavery had been largely abolished since 1829.

Ashley Rodriguez, Harrington’s niece commented, “I'm a Black Mexican ... Now that I've got older and realized what Juneteenth is about, I think of it in different perspectives. I think of it as my ancestors freeing themselves from slavery. Nobody really knows about the Mexican side of it.”