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What is Juneteenth and what you should know about this holiday

2022-06-18T16:22:28.081Z


The Juneteenth holiday commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, but the country still faces issues of racism and injustice.


What is celebrated on Juneteenth?

Here we explain it 1:33

(CNN) --

The June 19 holiday, Emancipation Day or Juneteenth, commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.

However, the country still faces systemic problems of racism and injustice.

Those difficulties were brought to the fore in the 2020 national debate and during the massive Black Lives Matter protests that were sparked by the 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers.

However, on June 16, 2021, the House of Representatives passed legislation that would establish June 19 as National Independence Day Juneteenth—a combination of the words June and nineteenth—a federal holiday. commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.

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A day later, Biden signed a bill that made Juneteenth a national holiday.

Biden said making June 19 a federal holiday would be remembered as "one of the greatest honors" of his presidency.

“I have to tell you that I have only been president for several months, but I think this will be, for me, one of the greatest honors that I will have as president,” Biden said at the White House during a signing ceremony.

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Biden, speaking at the White House alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, repeated the sentiments he conveyed when commemorating the Tulsa race massacre in early 2020, that "great nations do not ignore their most painful moments."

“They hug them.

The great nations do not walk away.

We have accepted the mistakes we made and by remembering those moments, we begin to heal and grow stronger,” the president said.

During the ceremony, the president said that it was not enough to commemorate the holiday, but to use it as a day of reflection and action.

"We have to heal"

Opal Lee, a 94-year-old retired educator and activist, known as the grandmother of Juneteenth, speaks with US President Joe Biden after he signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act in the East Room of the House Blanca on June 17, 2021 in Washington.

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

In her 90s, civil rights activist Opal Lee organized an annual two-mile walk to demand national recognition of Juneteenth and also honor the rarely told story of some 250,000 enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, who did not they learned of their freedom until two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

“We have to heal.

You have to know what happened and you have to heal from it," Lee told CNN in a 2021 interview.

Currently, all 50 states and the District of Columbia recognize June 19 as a holiday or observance, but only 18 states have enacted legislation as a paid state holiday.

These states are: Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, and the state of Washington.

Here's what you need to know about Juneteenth and its history:

  • The name of the day is a combination of the words June and nineteen.

  • It commemorates June 19, 1865 – the day Union Army Major General Gordon Granger rode to Galveston, Texas, and told the slaves of his emancipation.

    That day came more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Even after Lincoln declared all enslaved people free on paper, that had not necessarily been the case in practice.

  • Juneteenth is also known as Emancipation Day.

    People across the country celebrate with food and festivities, like the 4th of July.

  • All states, including the District of Columbia (the city of Washington), recognize the milestone of black liberation in some way.

    For example, some companies honor the occasion by giving their employees the day off.

    The last state to do so was South Dakota.

  • Despite being celebrated since 1865, it was only in 1980 that Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth a state holiday.

  • With Biden's signature, Juneteenth is the first approved holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which was established in 1983.

  • Juneteenth has often been overlooked by non-black Americans and omitted from the history books.

    However, the impetus to recognize the occasion was generated by the Black Lives Matter movement last year.

  • Despite certifying June 19 as a federal holiday, Black people in the US continue to face systemic challenges, such as the racial wealth gap, disproportionate incarceration, and persistent health disparities.

    Therefore, campaigners say the holiday should not be seen as a substitute for substantive action, but rather as a step in the right direction.

Doug Criss, Ryan Nobles, Ashley Vaughan, Ryan Bergeron, and Veronica Stracqualursi, all of CNN, contributed to this report.

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Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2022-06-18

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