Virginia governor to propose Juneteenth as state holiday

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By ALAN SUDERMAN and DENISE LAVOIE

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced Tuesday that he’s making Juneteenth — a day that commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S. — an official holiday in a state that was once home to the capital of the Confederacy.

Juneteenth, which is also called Emancipation Day and Freedom Day, is celebrated annually on June 19. Texas first made it a state holiday in 1980. The holiday would be a paid day off for all state employees. Northam said he thinks Virginia would be only the second state to do so.

“It’s time we elevate this,” Northam said of the June 19 commemoration. “Not just a celebration by and for some Virginians but one acknowledged and celebrated by all of us.”

The Democratic governor is giving every executive branch employee this Friday off as a paid holiday and will work with the legislature later this year to pass a law codifying Juneteenth as a permanent state holiday. The legislation is likely to pass the Democratic-controlled legislature with little trouble.



In this June 4, 2020 file photo Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam speaks during a news conference in Richmond, Va. Northam announced Tuesday, June 16, 2020 that he's making Juneteenth _ a day that commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S. _ an official holiday in a state that was once home to the capital of the Confederacy. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, file)


Read more: https://apnews.com/219da234c8bbfbd07c49b07154af22ee

[efhmc]

1. Lots of Texans of all races have known and celebrated Juneteenth all of their lives.

[Hip2bSquare]

2. Sweet suggestion

As a black woman this is truly a sweet heart warming suggestion. I really hope they work on making Election Day a national holiday. I would cheer for days if that happened in my lifetime.

[Marcuse]

3. The holiday should celebrate Lee's surrender at Appomattox as well as semi emancipation.

It took from April to June for word to reach the enslaved people in Texas. Someone should cover this song in a cheerful, optimistic upbeat.

[underpants]

4. It took 2 1/2 years

[Marcuse]

5. I agree it was 2.5 years after the EP which applied only in Confederate controlled territory.

[link:https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/what-is-juneteenth/|

The Emancipation Proclamation was and remains great PR but had little direct impact on enslaved persons. Slavers marched more than 150,000 African Americans west to Texas to stay ahead of the US Army. It was Lee’s surrender in April, 1865 that publicized and enabled emancipation and even then

On plantations, masters had to decide when and how to announce the news — or wait for a government agent to arrive — and it was not uncommon for them to delay until after the harvest. Even in Galveston city, the ex-Confederate mayor flouted the Army by forcing the freed people back to work, as historian Elizabeth Hayes Turner details in her comprehensive essay, “Juneteenth: Emancipation and Memory,” in Lone Star Pasts: Memory and History in Texas. Those who acted on the news did so at their peril.

The First Juneteenth

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.” —General Orders, Number 3; Headquarters District of Texas, Galveston, June 19, 1865

When Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued the above order, he had no idea that, in establishing the Union Army’s authority over the people of Texas, he was also establishing the basis for a holiday, “Juneteenth” (“June” plus “nineteenth”), today the most popular annual celebration of emancipation from slavery in the United States. After all, by the time Granger assumed command of the Department of Texas, the Confederate capital in Richmond had fallen; the “Executive” to whom he referred, President Lincoln, was dead; and the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery was well on its way to ratification.