“It’s something black people deserve, and it’s like we almost had to prove ourselves to get them to agree,” said Anthony Nolan, a spokesman for the Connecticut state where lawmakers argued hours earlier this year before passing legislation. to finance the holiday.
June thirteen marks the events of June 19, 1865, when Gordon Granger, a general of the Union, arrived in Galveston, Texas, to inform enslaved African Americans of their freedom after the end of the Civil War.
The day has been celebrated by black Americans since the late 1800s. Although all 50 states have recognized the Juneteenth by accepting a proclamation celebrating it, its full acceptance as an American holiday is yet to take root.
In Tennessee, Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, said civil servants should have a day off and spend more than $ 690,000 in the annual budget to cover the overtime costs of each employee who worked on June 16.
But when the bill came up for discussion during a committee hearing in February, Sen. Joey Hensley, a Republican, said he had spoken to more than 100 voters about the holiday. Only two knew what it was, he said.
“I just think putting the cart in front of the horse to make a holiday that people don’t know about,” Senator Hensley said during the hearing. “We have to educate people first and then celebrate, if we have to.”
The bill left the committee, but was removed from the legislative calendar later that month.
Resistance from some lawmakers recalls the tensions caused by efforts to make the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a paid holiday across the country.
President Ronald Reagan signed Dr. King’s birthday into federal law in 1983, but until 1990, Montana, New Hampshire and Arizona had not yet made it a legal holiday. In 1986, Bruce Babbitt, the governor of Arizona and a Democrat, introduced the holiday, but his successor, Republican Gov. Evan Sword, quickly repealed it the following year because he said the governor had no authority to do so.
In 1990, Arizona residents voted against a measure that would turn the day into a paid holiday, prompting Stevie Wonder, Doobie Brothers and Public Enemy to boycott the state in protest. The NFL also stripped the Phoenix region of its rights to host the 1993 Super Bowl.
In 1992, Arizona voters overwhelmingly agreed to turn Dr. King’s birthday into a public holiday.
The commemoration of June 16 marks the legal end of slavery in the United States, a tenacious achievement of the Civil War. General Granger’s message of 1865 gave effect to the Emancipation Proclamation, issued more than two years earlier by President Abraham Lincoln, on January 1, 1863.
The holiday is also called “Independence Day of June”, “Freedom Day” or “Emancipation Day”.
The nationwide proclamations are “largely symbolic,” said Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of African-American studies at Duke University.
“If you really want to put your skin in the game, take paid leave,” he said. Such actions show civil servants, he added, that “this is a sacrifice on our part.”
It also requires recognition that June 16 is a day that should be celebrated by all Americans, not just black citizens, Professor Neil said.
“You think of June 16 and Independence Day as something like the backbone of this idea of American democracy and freedom,” he said.
Texas became the first state in the country to make the Juneteenth paid holiday in 1980.
When Mr. Biden signed the holiday into federal law on June 17, 2021, eight other states had already taken paid leave.
These include New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Virginia, Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana and Massachusetts.
Nine more states have joined this year: Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota and Washington, according to the Congressional Research Service.
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