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picnic
(New York, NY) — Juneteenth is now a federal holiday. The day commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. It was on June 19th, 1865, that Major General Gordon Granger and his two-thousand Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas and proclaimed that Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation (two years earlier) and more than 250-thousand enslaved Black people in Texas were free. Slavery was officially abolished in the country in December 1865.
In 2021, then-President Joe Biden singed a bill that made Juneteenth an official federal holiday. The day is marked with block parties, picnics and parades. In Brooklyn, Reverend Al Sharpton joined movie director Spike Lee for breakfast at Junior’s. Lee said, ” We live in a very serious time in the world, not just the United States. It’s no joke. It’s serious business. Be safe. Be smart. And let’s move forward.”
