The Juneteenth National Independence Day Act was signed into law by then-United States President Joe Biden on June 17, 2021. The act was a formal declaration of Juneteenth as a federal holiday, which is now celebrated annually on June 19.
Perhaps because it hasn’t been a formal federal holiday for very long, Juneteenth is not as familiar to many Americans as holidays such as Memorial Day, Independence Day or Labor Day. According to the National Museum of African American History & Culture, June 19, 1865, was an especially significant day for more than a quarter million African Americans living in Texas at the time. Though the date marked nearly two years since President Abraham Lincoln emancipated enslaved Africans in America, Union troops did not arrive in Galveston Bay, Texas, with news of that freedom until June 1865. On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger delivered the news that all slaves had been emancipated and that going forward the dynamic between slave owners and slaves was to become a relationship between employer and hired laborer.
President Lincoln did not live to hear the news that the message of emancipation had finally made it to Galveston Bay. On April 15, 1865, the sixteenth president of the United States succumbed to injuries sustained a day earlier when he was shot by assassin John Wilkes Booth while attending a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Equally notable is the day General Granger delivered the news to Texas was more than two months after Confederate General Robert E. Lee formally surrendered his army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.
Though it took until 2021 for Juneteenth to gain formal recognition as a federal holiday, which means non-essential U.S. federal government offices are closed (many other institutions, including banks, schools and financial markets, also close as a courtesy), History.com notes the day is considered the longest-running African American holiday. And while many celebrations immediately broke out upon General Granger’s delivery of President Lincoln’s proclamation, History.com notes some slave holders in Texas withheld the information until the harvest season was completed.
