Even so, many Black Americans have observed June 19 for generations.
Tommie D. Boudreaux, a founding member of the Galveston Historical Foundation African American Heritage Committee, says the day recognizes that Black Americans “played a major part of building America.”
“It is a major, a major part of Americans’ history,” Boudreaux says.
How did it become a federal holiday?
Texas became the first state to formally recognize Juneteenth as a holiday in 1980. Dozens of other states followed suit to recognize it as a holiday or an observance in the ensuing decades as grassroots campaigns to expand its official acknowledgement built up.
Former President Barack Obama marked the day multiple times during his time in the White House. But it wasn’t until 2021, a year after the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor sparked racial justice protests across the country, that then-President Joe Biden designated Juneteenth a federal holiday.
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