WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris signed a bill into law on Thursday afternoon to make June 19 a federal holiday commemorating the end of the legal enslavement of Black Americans.
The bill, which was passed overwhelmingly by the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday after a unanimous vote in the Senate, marks the day in 1865 when a Union general informed a group of enslaved people in Texas that they had been made free two years earlier by President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War.
“Juneteenth marks both a long hard night of slavery subjugation and a promise of a brighter morning to come,” Biden said. H…
Keep on reading: Biden signs Juneteenth bill, creating holiday marking US slavery’s end