Congress Approves Bill to Make Juneteenth a Federal Holiday

WASHINGTON - The United States will soon have a new federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the nation.

The House voted 415-14 Wednesday to make Juneteenth, or June 19, the 12th federal holiday. The bill now goes to President Joe Biden's desk to be signed into law. Juneteenth commemorates when the last enslaved African Americans learned they were free. Confederate soldiers surrendered in April 1865, but word didn't reach the last enslaved Black people until June 19, when Union soldiers brought the news of freedom to Galveston, Texas. That was also about 2½ years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in the Southern states. It's the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created in 1983.