THE FUSE

Former President Joe Biden officially declared Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021, but Black families across the United States had been celebrating the date for more than a hundred years. The holiday commemorates the official end of slavery, when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865 to take control of the state and end the enslavement of African Americans. This was a full two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.