President Biden Signed bill making Juneteenth A federal holiday
(WASHINGTON, DC) White House: President Biden signs a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday, commemorating June 19, 1865, when slaves in Galveston, Texas, learned of their emancipation from Union Major General Gordon Granger as he took command of troops there and the Civil War finally ended.
“This is a day of profound weight and profound power, a day in which we remember the moral stain, the terrible toll that slavery took on the country and continues to take,” Biden said.
Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers brought the news of freedom to enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas — two months after the Confederacy had surrendered.
That was also about 2 1/2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in the Southern states. It’s the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created in 1983. One of the federal holidays, Inauguration Day, happens every four years.
