Juneteenth is an official holiday.
President Joe Biden has officially made Juneteenth a federal holiday over in the States.
June 19th has always been a historic day that marks the last day that African American slaves found out that they were free, but it was never an official holiday.
Biden has signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law, with Vice President Kamala Harris delivering remarks in the East Room of the White House.
Harris said: “Throughout history, Juneteenth has been known as many things: Freedom Day, Liberation Day, Emancipation Day. And today, a national holiday.”
Biden also added that making this a national holiday is one of his “greatest honors.”
He said: “I have to say to you, I have only been president for several months, but I think this will go down, for me, as one of the greatest honors I will have as president – not because I did it, you did it, Democats and Republicans. It’s an enormous, enormous honor.”
Juneteenth is now the 12th federal holiday and the first new holiday created since Martin Luther King Day in 1983.
Biden said that there was overwhelming support for this to be brought in, and hopes that it means there is a “change in how we deal with one another.”
Biden also introduced Opal Lee, a 94 year old activist whose home was torched by a white mob when she was a child, and has spent years trying to make this a holiday.
The pressure on the US government to make Juneteenth a holiday only got stronger last year during Black Lives Matter activism increasing across the country.
Washington, Oregon and other states have already passed bills declaring Juneteenth a state holiday.
Votes were unanimous in the US Senate to have this law passed on Wednesday, and it was followed by the House in a 415-14 vote.
It was then brought to the Oval Office for Biden to sign into law. The White House even had a celeb aspect to the historic day with Usher being present for the bill being signed into law.
It was on June 19th that the news that the Confederate had surrendered reached the last enslaved black people, with Union soldiers breaking the news of freedom in 1865 in Galveston, Texas, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in the South.
