Fast Facts for June 16, 2021
Juneteenth National Independence Day will officially become a US federal holiday.
The Senate unanimous passed the bill on Tuesday and the House passed it today.
The president is expected to sign the bill into law soon.
That means June 19th will receive all the same federal recognitions as other holidays –just like the Fourth of July and Labor Day.
So what is Juneteenth? Well, I did a video about it last year…here’s the recap.
Juneteenth is the symbolic celebration of the liberation of slaves in the US. On June 19th 1865 Union troops arrived in Galveston Texas to tell the last known confederate sympathizers that they had lost the war and all slaves *must* be freed.
1865??? – yes almost two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took effect. Scholars disagree exactly why it took so long however they say it could be anything from stubborn slave owners all the way to the fact that slaves weren’t legally allowed to read.
Most u-s states recognize Juneteenth as a holiday – but now it will become a federal one.
Ironically enough the very last state to know about the emancipation of slaves, Texas, was the very first to approve Juneteenth as a state holiday in 1980. In fact Republican Sen. John Cornyn and Democrat Representative Sheila Jackson Lee both from Texas are co-sponsors of the Juneteenth bill.
