Juneteenth 2025: What to know about the federal holiday
Juneteenth is a federal holiday that recognizes the freedom of formerly enslaved Black people. The commemoration traditionally takes place on June 19 to commemorate the day in 1865 when Major Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in the state of Texas to share the news of the Emancipation Proclamation, announcing the official end of the Civil War.
This year, the holiday falls on a Thursday.
Here's all you need to know about the approaching celebration:
Juneteenth was signed into law as a federal holiday on June 17, 2021, by former President Biden. He was surrounded by civil rights activists including Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) and Opal Lee.
Opal Lee is known as the 'Grandmother of Juneteenth,' after walking 2.5 miles each year to symbolize the two and a half years it took for news of the Emancipation Proclamation to reach Texas.
In 2016, at age 89, she walked from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C., hoping to convince former President Obama to establish Juneteenth as a national holiday. Five years later, Biden completed the task and awarded Opal Lee with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her advocacy work.
The first Juneteenth celebration took place in 1866, one year after Granger's order. Some referenced the holiday as 'Jubilee Day' or 'Freedom Day' and gathered in homes, parks and communities to celebrate.
The holiday was first listed on the calendar of public events in 1872 with the help of the government's Freedmen's Bureau agency for newly freed Black people.
Later that year, a group of Black organizers in Texas pooled together $1,000 for the purchase of 10 acres now known as Houston's Emancipation Park, where Juneteenth celebrations are hosted to date.
The Freedmen's Bureau recently digitized its search portal for archives from 1865-1872 to allow family historians and genealogists to research the history of their ancestors in the United States.
On Juneteenth, the U.S. Postal Service, banks and the stock market will be closed.
Nonessential government employees will also be granted the day off from work.
Many people use the Juneteenth holiday as a time to reflect on the country's past. Cities and states across the country typically host educational programming to inform individuals of the 250,000 Blacks who gained their freedom in honor of the holiday.
Celebrations may include readings of former president Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, cook outs, festivals and Miss Juneteenth contests across the country.
Some may also sing the Black national anthem, 'Lift Every Voice and Sing.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
29 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Fact check: Trump makes multiple false claims to the troops at Fort Bragg
President Donald Trump made a series of false claims to members of the military on Tuesday in a partisan and combative speech at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Trump lied again about the 2020 election. He repeated a long-debunked story about a Minnesota National Guard deployment in 2020. He again distorted the history of his first administration's fight against the ISIS terror group. He revived a fictional tale about immigration during former President Joe Biden's administration. And he exaggerated the military's recruiting challenges under Biden. In addition, Trump made a series of vague assertions about the protests in Los Angeles for which he presented no evidence. Here is a fact check of some of his checkable false claims from the speech – plus a false claim he made in remarks about California at the White House earlier in the day. The 2020 election: Trump repeated his long-debunked lie that the 2020 election 'was rigged and stolen.' Trump legitimately lost a free and fair election to Biden. The National Guard and Minneapolis: While bashing Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Trump revived a false story that CNN debunked nearly five years ago. Trump wrongly claimed that it was him, not Walz, who sent the National Guard to Minneapolis in 2020 amid the civil unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Trump said: 'I'll never forget in Minnesota: that city was burning down, Minneapolis, it was burning down, it was gonna burn to the ground, and he wouldn't call the guard. And I waited for a long time, and I called the guard, and I saved it.' In reality, publicly available evidence proves that Walz first deployed the Minnesota National guard more than seven hours before Trump publicly threatened to deploy the guard himself. While Walz was criticized by many Republicans and some Democrats for not sending in the guard faster, it is indisputable that Walz, not Trump, was the person who deployed the guard. You can read more here. Trump and the battle against ISIS: Trump repeated his regular false claim that even though 'they said it would take five years to defeat ISIS, we did in four weeks, four weeks.' The so-called ISIS 'caliphate' was declared fully liberated more than two years into Trump's presidency, in 2019, not 'in four weeks.' Military recruiting under Biden: Trump, boasting of the military's recruiting performance during his second administration, falsely claimed, 'Just think of this: six months ago, we couldn't recruit anybody to join the military. Nobody wanted to join. That was six months ago.' Even granting that words like 'nobody' can be used less than literally, it's simply not true that 'nobody wanted to join' the military at the end of the Biden administration. The ongoing uptick in recruiting actually began under the Biden administration. The Defense Department announced in October 2024, before Trump's second victory, that recruitment was up more than 12% in the 2024 fiscal year compared with the previous fiscal year; reported in October 2024: 'After years of negative recruiting news and headlines, all the military branches managed to eke out wins this year and meet their recruiting goals – largely aided by new programs and policies that allowed them to sign up recruits who would have been disqualified in previous years.' The Army, for example, added just over 55,000 recruits, up substantially from just under 45,000 in fiscal year 2022. Migrants, prisons and mental institutions: Trump made his frequent assertion that foreign countries deliberately placed prisoners and people with mental illnesses in the US as migrants during Biden's presidency. 'Many of them came out of prisons and jails – the most heinous people, they came from all over the world. They came from the Congo in Africa, they came from Asia, they came from the prisons of these places, they were put into the United States and allowed to stay here,' Trump said at one point. At another, he said, 'Their countries would bus them or drive them right to our border and say, 'Go in there. If you ever come back, we're going to kill you.'' Trump has never presented any evidence of any foreign government transporting their criminals to the US border under Biden. Nor has he corroborated his stories about foreign governments deliberately emptying prisons and mental health facilities to somehow facilitate migration to the US, which even his 2024 presidential campaign could not prove. His allegations about prisons in 'the Congo' have been rejected as baseless by independent experts, human rights organizations, and the governments of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo. California, fires and water: At the White House earlier on Tuesday, Trump again wrongly asserted that the January wildfires in Los Angeles 'started because they wouldn't allow water into LA, they wouldn't allow water into California' – and added that he then turned water 'around,' and 'now we have billions of gallons of water flowing down.' None of this is true. First, nobody has broadly refused to allow water into Los Angeles or into California as a whole. Second, experts on California water policy and firefighting have repeatedly explained that there is no basis for Trump's claims that the January wildfires were caused by water being used for environmental protection in northern California rather than being sent to Los Angeles. Third, Trump did not actually send water to Los Angeles earlier this year. Rather, in what experts widely described as a waste and a stunt, he had about two billion gallons of fresh water sent from one part of California's Central Valley to another part of the valley in late January and early February.
Yahoo
43 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Mobile exhibit honoring veterans stops in Scranton
SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — A mobile exhibit made a stop in Lackawanna County Tuesday to honor our country's veterans. The Wreaths Across America Exhibit was at Toyota of Scranton on Tuesday. The exhibit features displays that educate visitors about those who serve. It also features a theater where guests can learn about wreaths for veterans. Greek Food Festival kicks off in Scranton Organizers say honoring veterans is a cause that's near and dear to their hearts. 'I come from a very, ya know, proud military family, and I just love veterans. I love being able to bring awareness to the veterans that are still here, and veterans that have passed, because if we didn't have them, then we wouldn't have half the things that we do now,' Location Coordinator for Wreaths Across America, Megan Fenwick, explained. The Wreaths Across America event runs through Wednesday at Toyota of Scranton and is free. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
43 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump says nationwide immigration raids on the way, rioters to face 'greater force' than LA
President Donald Trump said Americans can expect additional immigration raids across the country similar to the ones in California, while warning that any potential riots that break out in response to the raids will be met with "equal or greater force" compared to the government's handling of recent Los Angeles violence. "Mr. President, these protests obviously started in reaction to these large-scale ICE operations in Los Angeles. Should people expect to see similar operations in the rest of the country and with similar protests, similar responses?" a reporter asked the president from the Oval Office early Tuesday afternoon. "Yeah, as you know, we're moving murderers out of our country that were put here by Biden or the autopen," Trump responded, referring to the Biden administration's use of an autopen to sign official documents that Trump has argued indicated Biden staffers were in charge of high-profile decisions and not former President Joe Biden. "The people are criminals that allowed these criminals into our country," Trump continued. "And I don't think that Biden knew what the hell he was doing. I don't think he even knew about it. But when they opened up our borders for the whole world to come in, yeah, we're going to get them out. We're getting them out." 'Delusional' Hillary Clinton Savagely Mocked For La Riots Response: 'Only Leftists Disable Comments' The president was addressing efforts by federal agencies to address wildfire management and prevention as the nation heads into the summer months, and he took a bevvy of questions from reporters regarding the riots that have spiraled in Los Angeles since Friday. Read On The Fox News App Watch: Dem, Media Outlets Insist La Anti-ice Riots Are 'Peaceful' Despite Violence, Injured Cops Riots broke out in the left-wing city Friday evening after federal law enforcement officials converged on Los Angeles to carry out immigration raids as part of Trump's vow to deport illegal aliens who flooded the nation under the Biden administration. Local leaders such as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom, however, quickly denounced the raids in public statements while offering words of support for illegal aliens in the state. Protests over the raids soon devolved into violence as rioters targeted federal law enforcement officials, including throwing rocks, with videos showing people looting stores, setting cars on fire and taking over a freeway. Musk Does Immediate 180 On Trump As Soon As La Riots Rage Trump announced Saturday that he was deploying 2,000 National Guard members to help quell the violence, bypassing the governor, who typically activates the National Guard. The move sparked Newsom to file a lawsuit against the Trump administration for efforts to allegedly "federalize the California National Guard," while Democrats across the nation have attempted to pin blame for the violence on Trump's activation of the National Guard while characterizing the anti-ICE riots as "peaceful" demonstrations. Trump continued Tuesday that if riots break out in other areas of the country in response to immigration raids, violent protesters will be met with "equal or greater force" than those participating in the L.A. riots. "If we didn't attack this one very strongly, you'd have them all over the country," he said. "But I can inform the rest of the country that when they do it, if they do it, they're going to be met with equal or greater force than we met right here." Illegal immigrants in the U.S. "come from jails, and they come from mental institutions, and they come from all over the world, not just South America," Trump added. "And we're not going to let them stay." As the riots continued on Monday, the Trump administration deployed hundreds of Marines to respond to the chaos. Newsom's Political Future 'Practically Nonexistent' As La Devolves Into Riots, Social Media Critics Predict "Approximately 700 Marines with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division will seamlessly integrate with the Title 10 forces under Task Force 51 who are protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area," U.S. Northern Command said in a Monday statement. Trump defended in a Truth Social post early Tuesday morning that if he "didn't 'SEND IN THE TROOPS' to Los Angeles the last three nights, that once beautiful and great City would be burning to the ground right now." "Much like 25,000 houses burned to the ground in L.A. do to an incompetent Governor and Mayor — Incidentally, the much more difficult, time consuming, and stringent FEDERAL PERMITTING PROCESS is virtually complete on these houses, while the easy and simple City and State Permits are disastrously bungled up and WAY BEHIND SCHEDULE! They are a total mess, and will be for a long time. People want to rebuild their houses. Call your incompetent Governor and Mayor, the Federal permitting is DONE!!!" Trump continued, referring to the thousands of homes that burned in southern California wildfires that gripped the Los Angeles area in January. The Trump administration's immigration raids and deportation efforts are part of the president's campaign pledge to remove the millions of illegal immigrants that flooded the nation under the Biden article source: Trump says nationwide immigration raids on the way, rioters to face 'greater force' than LA
