Joe Biden enacts law establishing public holiday to mark end of slavery

US President Joe Biden on Thursday passed a law creating a new federal holiday, “Juneteenth,” to commemorate the emancipation of the last slaves in Texas on June 19, 1865.

,' he said during the ceremony at the White House, alongside his Vice President Kamala Harris, of Indian and Jamaican descent.

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Slavery, officially abolished in December 1865, is a

and

said the Democratic president. By making June 19 a holiday,

But, he stressed, the emancipation of black American slaves was

of efforts to

, assured Joe Biden, while the black minority (13% of the population) still suffers from discrimination in terms of employment, housing or health.

In a rare moment of political unity, the Senate had unanimously approved on Tuesday the text of the law consecrating the

, contraction of

and

in English, then the House representatives had adopted it by an overwhelming majority, only 14 elected Republicans voting against. It marks the date of June 19, 1865, when the Union Army, victorious in the Civil War (1861-1865), announced to the slaves of the Texas town of Galveston that they were free men, over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863.

Slavery was officially abolished in December 1865, with the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. This holiday is reserved for federal government employees deemed non-essential, but the "Juneteenth" is already a holiday in most US states. The day is usually celebrated with parades, concerts or neighborhood parties. Several large companies like Twitter, Nike or Lyft made it a day off for their employees after the death of George Floyd, an African-American killed by a white policeman on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis, whose murder sparked a historic wave of anger at racism.