In case you missed it, the nation has a new holiday – Juneteenth. President Biden signed the legislation to make June 19 a federal holiday on June 17. Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.
"All Americans can feel the power of this day, and learn from our history," the president said at a ceremony at the White House, noting that it was the first national holiday established since Martin Luther King’s Birthday in 1983.
Juneteenth falls of June 19. This year it fell on a Saturday, and some schools immediately celebrated the holiday the day after the president’s announcement. The holiday, which was initially called Jubilee, was first celebrated in Texas one year after Emancipation, where on that date in 1865, in the aftermath of the Civil War, slaves were declared free under the terms of the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation.
