Juneteenth has been recognized as a US federal holiday since 2021 and acts as a day to celebrate the end of slavery in the country – but millions of Americans will not have the day off today, 19 June, to mark the occasion. At least 30 states – including most recently Rhode Island and Kentucky – and the District of Columbia recognize Juneteenth as an official public holiday, according to the Pew Research The Guardian
On January 1,1863, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to begin the process of ending slavery, a long process. The document had strings attached — “Despite its expansive wording, the Emancipation Clause Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the ?Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory. National Archives
It was not until 2021 that Juneteenth, the commemoration in part of the freedom of slaves during the Civil War, was signed into law as a Federal Holiday by President Biden.
And even today it is not celebrated federally in some places, setting up a states rights vs Federal law conflict which was used the and now to justify war,……
Ten states – all in the American south – have at least one day commemorating the Confederacy, according to Axios, and six former Confederate states do not officially recognize Juneteenth: Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, South Carolina and North Carolina.. . . “Not treating Juneteenth the way all other holidays are treated is a slap in the face to African Americans,” Lisa Young, president of the Tuscaloosa county branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), told the Washington Post.
Per the Guardian., “Efforts to separate the joint state holiday celebrating Robert E Lee Day, a Confederate general, and the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr also appear to have stalled in Alabama, as have efforts to abolish Confederate-related state holidays in other states.”
“We’re trying to separate the holidays of two men whose ideologies were totally separate, from one end of the totem pole to the other,” Alabama state senator Vivian Davis said. “One believed in justice and fairness for all, and another believed in slavery.”