Today is Juneteenth.
Juneteenth National Independence Day is the newest Federal holiday but has been celebrated across the country for almost 160 years. The holiday is also called Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, and Black Independence Day. The date commemorates the emancipation of the last enslaved people in Southern states that formed the Confederacy during the American Civil War; while the Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863, its purpose was not enacted in many Confederate States until the Union forces arrived. On June 19, 1865, a group of Union soldiers arriving in Galveston, Texas shared the proclamation with enslaved Black Americans there. While the Emancipation Proclamation was powerful in undoing the evil of slavery in the former Confederacy, it did not address the Union Border states of Delaware and Kentucky where slavery was legal; slavery was finally outlawed in the entire United States by the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution in December 1865, when it was certified by the Secretary of State that three-fourths of the states had ratified it.