President Biden signed a bill Thursday formally designating June 19th as Juneteenth.
Juneteenth, commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, is officially a federal holiday. President Biden signed a bill Thursday formally designating June 19th as Juneteenth. The holiday commemorates the day in 1865 when slaves in Texas finally got word the Civil War had ended and they were freed, two months after the Confederacy surrendered. “Juneteenth marks both a long, hard night of slavery and subjugation and a promise of a brighter morning to come,” Biden said. “Great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments. They don’t ignore those moments in the past. They embrace them. Great nations don’t walk away. “We come to terms with the mistakes we made. And remembering those moments, we begin to heal and grow stronger,” he added. On June 19, 1865, Union Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and informed enslaved African Americans that the Civil War was over and that they were freed by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, signed two years earlier. Granger arrived in Galveston two months after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at the Battle of Appomattox Court House in Virginia.
