Americans will celebrate Juneteenth on Wednesday, marking the day when the last enslaved people in the United States learned they were free.
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 as a federal holiday.
Here’s what to know about this federal holiday and what it mean for U.S. workers on June 19 this year.
The celebration started with the freed enslaved people of Galveston, Texas. Although the Emancipation Proclamation freed enslaved people in the South in 1863, it could not be enforced in many places until after the end of the Civil War in 1865.
Laura Smalley, freed from a plantation near Bellville, Texas, remembered …