160 years after its inception, a guide to what is Juneteenth and how to celebrate it
It was 160 years ago that enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they had been freed — after the Civil War's end and two years after President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
The resulting Juneteenth holiday — it's name combining 'June' and 'nineteenth' — has only grown in one-and-a-half centuries. In 2021, President Joe Biden designated it a federal holiday — making it more universally recognized beyond Black America.
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