Juneteenth is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. On June 19, 1865, enslaved African Americans in Texas were told they were free. Also called Juneteenth National Independence Day, Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day (TX), Freedom Day, and Black Independence Day — on Monday, June 19, 2023, this day will have been observed for 157 years.

Connecticut also made this a state holiday.

We have celebrated and written about Juneteenth many times here through the years, and here, and here is a description of one of our celebrations at the Carver Community Center in 2017.

For generations, Black Americans have recognized the end of one of the darkest chapters in U.S. history with joy in the form of parades, street festivals, musical performances, or cookouts.

The U.S. government was slow to embrace the occasion — it was only in 2021 that President Joe Biden signed a bill passed by Congress to set aside Juneteenth, or June 19th, as a federal holiday.

The national reckoning over race ignited by the 2020 death of George Floyd helped set the stage for Juneteenth to become the first new federal holiday since 1983, when Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created.

As recently said by Para LaNell Agboga, museum site coordinator at the George Washington Carver Museum, Cultural and Genealogy Center in Austin, Texas: “Our freedoms are fragile, and it doesn’t take much for things to go backward.”