Thursday marked a historical day. With many years of campaigning to mark Juneteenth a Federal Holiday, it finally came through with both the Vice President and then the Presidents signing into a Federal Day.
The Juneteenth National Independence Day Act bill was passed overwhelmingly by the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday in a 415 to 14 vote after clearing the Senate unanimously, was first by the House Speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi then signed Vice President Harris who in her role as President of the Senate signed her first bill in the Roosevelt Room with a bust of Frederick Douglas looking on.
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The bill had been championed for years by Black legislators in the US Congress led by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas.
Then she move on and joined President Biden in the East Room for the President's signature to the bill into law. Before that the Vice President gave remarks, “Today is a day of celebration,” said Vice President Harris. “It is not only a day of pride, it is also a day for us to reaffirm and rededicate ourselves to action.”
She also went on and reminded the 80+ White House guests who were invited which included Congress Legislators who helped passed in the bill, that they were gathered in a "house built by enslaved people," and said the holiday would be an occasion to "reaffirm and rededicate ourselves to action."
The campaign to federally recognise Juneteenth also as known as the US’s “Second Independence Day” began with Opal Lee, a 94-year-old Texan and many other Civil Rights Activists of her generation who has campaigned her entire life to make Juneteenth a national holiday.
Juneteenth which is marked on June 19th previously known as Jubilee Day, Freedom Day, Liberation Day or Emancipation Day commemorates the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans, when the last enslaved Black Americans were told they were free during the US Civil War between Confederate slave-holding states in the south and Union free states in the north
Confederate forces surrendered in April 1865, but the message of liberation did not reach the last enslaved Black people until June 19, when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas. President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation two and a half years ago, liberating American slaves in 1863.
Most US states already recognise Juneteenth as a holiday or have an official observance of the day with most been a paid holiday for state employees in Texas, New York, Virginia and Washington, DC.
