The "Happy Juneteenth Day" Story

 It was an ordinary day.  Oh...and a Happy Juneteenth to you!  I was watching when President Joe Biden signed the bill this past Thursday that set aside Juneteenth, or June 19th, as a Federal holiday.

 I'm sure the mailmen, trash men, etc are all happy they will have another day off during the year.  It would be nice if it were a paid holiday, but at least they should have the day off.  The reason for the holiday dates back to 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in the southern states.  Seems it wasn't enforced until after the end of the Civil War in 1865.  I read the story of Laura Smalley, a freed black woman who worked on a plantation near Bellville, Texas.  Seems her master had gone to fight in the civil War and came home without telling his slaves what had happened.  Never told them that they were now free.  She said they continued to be slaves until six months later when it was found out they were free.  Date it happened was June 19th.  She said, "That's why, you know, we celebrate that day."  It was on June 19th that Union Major General Gordon Granger and his troops arrived at Galveston, Texas with the news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free.  That was more than two months after Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia.  Granger delivered General Order No. 3 which said: "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.  This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor."  It wasn't until the following year that the now-free people began to celebrate Juneteenth in Galveston.  It's observance has continued around the United States as well as the world ever since.  Concerts, parades and readings of the Emancipation Proclamation are events that have become commonplace and will continue with the new National Holiday.  So, exactly what does Juneteenth mean.  The blending of the words June and nineteenth is meant to be much the same as Independence Day or Freedom Day.  A majority of the United States had already recognized the day and was a paid holiday for Texas state employees, but will now be a declared National Holiday with the signing of the bill by President Biden.  It was in 1996 that the first legislation to recognize Juneteenth Independence Day was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.  The following year Congress recognized the day through Senate Joint Resolution 11 and House Joint Resolution 56.  In 2013 the U.S. Senate passed Senate Resolution 175, acknowledging Lula Briggs Galloway (late president of the National Juneteenth Lineage), who successfully worked to bring national recognition to Juneteenth Independence Day and the continued leadership the National Juneteenth Observation Foundation.  Then in June of 2019, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf recognized Juneteenth as a holiday in the state where I live.  

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signing the bill.

In 2020 state governors of Virginia, New York and New Jersey signed executive orders recognizing Juneteenth as a paid day of leave for state employees.  In 2021, the governor of Oregon also signed an executive order as the other states had done the year before.  Activists had long been pushing Congress to recognize Juneteenth.  It is finally a National Holiday and joins New Year's Day, Independence Day, Veterans Day, and Christmas Day as National Holidays.  Juneteenth will coincide with Father's Day in 2022, 2033, 2039, 2044 and 2050.  Since the 1980s and 1990s the holiday has been more widely celebrated among African-American communities, but now will be a National Holiday for all to celebrate.  Now, the holiday that is considered the "longest-running African-American holiday, and has been called America's second Independence Day" will now be a National Holiday as it should have been years ago.  I hope you can enjoy your new holiday today with celebrations and remembrances of why it has become a new National Holiday.  It really should have happened years and years ago.  Happy Juneteenth Day!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

The Juneteenth Day Flag