Juneteenth to Be U.S. Holiday, 156 Years After Slavery’s End

[Jim K Global Moderator]

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(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden will sign legislation Thursday making Juneteenth a federal holiday to commemorate the end of slavery in the U.S., with most U.S. government employees granted paid leave on Friday.

 

The act establishes the first new federal holiday in nearly four decades, and comes after more than a year of a national racial reckoning sparked by police killings of Black Americans. Juneteenth marks the day when the last enslaved African Americans were ordered freed after Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, three years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

 

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Bloomberg via MSN

 

This is the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created in 1983.  There are now 11 Federal holidays.

[menifred]

Finally!