As a new federal holiday, Happy Juneteenth National Independence Day!

Today celebrates the date of June 19, 1865, when enslaved people of African descent located in Galveston, Texas, finally learned of their freedom from the slavery system in the United States.

While the Emancipation Proclamation granted freedom and was signed on January 1, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln. Texas was the farthest of the Confederate states, and slaveholders there made no attempt to free the enslaved African Americans they held in bondage. President Lincoln’s proclamation was unenforceable without military intervention, which eventually came nearly two and a half years later.

Juneteenth is an important date on the timeline of slavery history in the United States and now a federal holiday just signed into law earlier this week.

Take a moment today and reflect on the importance of this holiday.