MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th June, 2021) The US House of Representatives has voted 415-14 to designate June 19 as Juneteenth National Independence Day and make it a legal public holiday.
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a senior lawmaker of the House Committee on the Judiciary who presided over the vote, praised the passage of the act. It will now go to President Joe Biden for signing.
"With the passage of the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, the Federal government will join 47 states in recognizing as a holiday Juneteenth, the day that has been celebrated by African Americans for 156 years and has been called rightly as 'America's second Independence Day," she said.
She said Juneteenth honored the end of the 400 years of suffering endured by African Americans during the times of chattel slavery.
Juneteenth commemorates the day when Union Army Gen. Gordon Granger rode into the Texan city of Galveston and announced that the Civil War was over, freeing the remaining 250,000 slaves more than two years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
