Today President Joe Biden signed into law that June 19, best known as “Juneteenth” will now be a U.S. federal holiday, effective immediately.
“Juneteeth” is the term that has been used across centuries to commemorate June 19, 1865, the day enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, first learned from Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger that the Civil War was over, and they were free by order of the president (Lincoln, who had issued the Emancipation 2 1/2 years earlier). Celebrations occurred every year in Texas on Juneteenth, and later spread across the South as the idea caught on.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which is the human resources office for the federal government, tweeted today that most federal employees will observe the new holiday — Juneteenth National Independence Day — on Friday since June 19 falls on a Saturday this year.
Today @POTUS will sign the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, establishing June 19th as a federal holiday. As the 19th falls on a Saturday, most federal employees will observe the holiday tomorrow, June 18th.
— U.S. Office of Personnel Management (@USOPM) June 17, 2021
Biden said signing the legislation into law is one of the greatest honors he will have as president. Vice President Kamala Harris also signed the legislation in her capacity as President of the Senate.
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 but the distance we have to travel,” Biden said.
Biden also praised the efforts of Opal Lee, 94, an activist who at the age of 89 walked from her home in Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., to get Juneteenth named a national holiday. Biden referred to her as “a grandmother of the movement to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.”