The United States will soon have a new federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the nation.
Congress has approved a bill that would make Juneteenth, or 19 June, a holiday – a bill Joe Biden is expected to sign into law.
Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached the people of Galveston, Texas, freeing slaves in the last rebel state. Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, freeing enslaved people in the southern states, and Confederate soldiers surrendered in April 1865. But the proclamation wasn’t enforced in Galveston until federal soldiers read out the proclamation on 19 June 1865.
“Our
→ Continue reading at The Guardian – News