Free Juneteenth SVG files

What the day marks

On 19 June 1865, Union General Gordon Granger arrived at Galveston, Texas, and General Order No. 3 was read out: all enslaved people in Texas were free. The Emancipation Proclamation had declared it from 1 January 1863, but it could not be enforced in Texas until the Union army came. Freed people in Texas held the first celebrations a year later, and the day has been kept ever since. It became a federal holiday in the United States in 2021.

The designs here use symbols that belong to everyone: the raised fist, broken chains, a five-pointed star for Texas, a sunrise for a new beginning, and the year 1865. The red, black and green of the layered design are the colours of the Pan-African flag adopted in 1920.

Cutting for shirts and for the table

The fist is the piece most people want on a shirt. It is solid, with finger lines about 1.8 mm wide at 100 mm, so cut it at 200 mm or more in iron-on vinyl and the lines weed easily. The chain is finer: each link is a ring about 3.6 mm thick at 100 mm, good for vinyl and card from 150 mm wide, and for wood from about 250 mm. For a cookout, cut the bunting from card as a cake topper at 150 mm, or scale one pennant up and cut it five times for real bunting.

How to open the files

• Cricut Design Space: choose Upload, pick the SVG, and add it to the canvas. Set the width you want; the shape is already welded.
• Silhouette Studio: Designer Edition and above open the SVG. The free Basic Edition does not, so open the DXF instead.
• LightBurn, xTool Creative Space and Glowforge: import the SVG, then set the layer to cut, score or engrave.
• Inkscape, Illustrator and Affinity: open the SVG. It is a plain filled path, so you can recolour it, add a stroke or combine it with your own work.
• Printing or sublimation: use the PNG, which has a transparent background.

Each design page lists the file’s narrowest part at seven sizes, so you can tell whether it will survive at the size you plan to cut.

Questions