The United States now officially has one new federal holiday: Juneteenth. This holiday, which has been unofficially observed since it was established in 1866, is celebrated annually on June 19 and commemorates the end of slavery in Texas on June 19, 1865, after the end of the Civil War and almost two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden signed a piece of legislation into law establishing June 19 a new federal holiday, named Juneteenth National Independence Day. The bill went into effect immediately, and, as Juneteenth fell on a Saturday this year, meant Friday suddenly became a federal holiday.
Schools, federal offices, and many other government services scrambled to close over the new federal holiday, but due to the very short notice, many other services, including the U.S. Postal Service and the stock markets, remained open on Friday.
Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the entirety of the United States. After the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, enforcement of the proclamation was left to Union soldiers, and so many parts of rural Texas, located far away from Union lines, saw little to no enforcement of the proclamation. On June 19, 1865, Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued an order in Galveston, Texas, declaring all slaves free in Texas as per the proclamation. The 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery nationwide, was ratified just months later.
The push to make Juneteenth a federal holiday had been long in the making. Ever since Texas officially recognized Juneteenth as a state holiday in 1980, all states (except South Dakota) and Washington, D.C., all slowly started to recognize the holiday. Federally, the first piece of legislation ever introduced to recognize Juneteenth was introduced in the House in 1996 and has been reintroduced often since, but it never got enough momentum to pass the house.
The day commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S. has always been important to Black and African Americans. During the civil rights movement, Juneteenth began to become widely celebrated, especially by Blacks, to tie their struggle to that of ending celebration. In the 1970s, tens of thousands of people attended Juneteenth celebrations that occurred in many cities such as Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Houston, and Fort Worth, Texas.
In 2020, amid the Black Lives Matter protest movement, momentum to further cement Juneteenth as an official celebration and federal holiday picked up. That year saw many states and businesses declaring Juneteenth a paid day off and many schools and colleges canceled classes.
Previously, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin blocked the bill in 2020, claiming that a new federal holiday would cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. This week, Johnson finally dropped his objection, allowing the Senate to unanimously pass the bill Tuesday. The House voted on and passed the bill on Wednesday by a vote of 415-14, with 14 Republicans voting against the bill. Biden signed the law the very next day, establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday at around 4 p.m. EDT just before the day was to be observed Friday.
It marked the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established in 1983.
The bill’s passage by overwhelming bipartisan majorities was thanks to the bipartisan sponsorship of the bill. In total, 60 senators from both parties sponsored the bill.
Biden described signing the bill as “one of the greatest honors” of his presidency. “I regret that my grandchildren aren’t here, because this is a really, really, really important moment in our history. By making Juneteenth a federal holiday, all Americans can feel the power of this day and learn from our history — and celebrate progress and grapple with the distance we’ve come [and] the distance we have to travel,” he said.
The signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House saw some 80 members of Congress attending, numerous other elected officials, and activists. Activist Opal Lee, who at the age of 89, walked all the way from her home in Fort Worth to Washington in an effort to get Juneteenth named as a federal holiday was in attendance too.
The recognition of Juneteenth by the federal government is one major step forward to establishing racial equality in the U.S. “The promise of equality is not going to be fulfilled until we become real, it becomes real in our schools and on our Main Streets and in our neighborhoods,” Biden said.