(Plus characters to satisfy discourse)
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee has been introducing Juneteenth Bills every year for a few years. There have been folks working for a few decades on getting this as a federal holiday (one of them was at the signing today).
It was actually looking like it may pass last year. But Senator Johnson from Wisconsin (a Republican) objected to the cost so suggested it replace Columbus Day. Then Tucker Carlson declared it war on Columbus and that ended. Sen Johnson removed his desire to have it replace another holiday, realizing that wasn’t going to happen and let it go through.
Those who work a compressed schedule and would normally have the 18th off anyway will get holiday pay for today.
Awesome!! Let’s make fireworks part of the tradition so people can blow shit up from mid-June to July 4th! Oh wait, that already happens.
Can’t wait to see how Hallmark and the beer companies cash in on this. “Dads, Grads and ???”
Next year will be a Juneteenth/Father’s Day combo.
(Hey Discourse, stop flagging Juneteenth as a misspelling)
What does Saskatchewan have to do with Juneteenth? My googling keeps pairing them but I don’t see an explanation? Something about a song?
OK, now that Juneteenth is official…
…what is the appropriate way for a White/Jewish girl to celebrate the holiday? I mean, this year I’ll be at work so arguably I’ll be facilitating other peoples’ celebrations, as happens with all holidays I am at work. So, cool, I feel that’s worthwhile.
But while I have long been aware of Juneteenth I have not celebrated it before, not feeling that it is “my” holiday. (When invited to celebrate with others I, of course, accepted the invitation, but that’s a bit different). Now that it is an Official Federal Holiday (long overdue, probably) what is the appropriate way for the rest of us to participate in a sincere, respectful, but also joyous manner?
I think we’ll fly an American flag, it now it’s a federal holiday. It’ll be interesting to see if any neighbors do the same.
Specifically a song by Laura Love. I’m not familiar with the song but the connection between Saskatchewan and freed slaves dates back to 1910.
Do they? I don’t know about typically - leaving out the whole MLK issue, the Federal government had ten holidays for employees ( now 11 with Juneteenth) , my state had 12 ( now 13 with Juneteenth, which we were given as a holiday last year) and my city still has 12, since the city is not giving employees Juneteenth as a holiday*. So my garbage will be picked up on June 19.
A fair amount of states have public holidays that are not Federal holidays ( Lincoln’s birthday, Election day, Black Friday, Patriots’ Day and Good Friday are the ones I can think of offhand) and local governments often have holidays that are neither state nor Federal holidays.I know one that has half-days for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve as official holidays. I’m sure a lot of state and local governments simply follow the Federal government holiday calendar but plenty don’t.
* At least not this year.
I came here to ask the same question. I’m actually throwing a party that day. But now I feel like I ought to make more of a nod to Juneteenth than mentioning it in the email inviting people. Are there traditional foods? Something I ought to do?
Thanks! I knew about Shiloh settlement in a very general way. Will look into it more.
I’m at work today (grocery store) and we already have people calling to ask us if we’re closing for the holiday.
We get this for every major holiday, even the ones that businesses don’t close for (who ever heard of a grocery store closing for Mother’s Day?), but I didn’t think it’d happen this quickly.
I’m embarrassed to say that as a lifelong Texan and a resident of Galveston from 1999 - 2006, I wasn’t aware of Juneteenth and it’s significance until about 10 years ago. I’m glad this legislation passed, and I hope more people will become aware of the holiday and it’s significance as a result.
That’s weird. My grocery store closes for New Year’s Day, and for Thanksgiving, and for Christmas. I think that’s it. And maybe it’s open Thanksgiving morning. It would never occur to me to wonder if my grocery store might close for a newly announced federal holiday. Do you close for Presidents Day or MLK or Memorial day? My supermarket sells a ton of food on those days.
Johnson and Carlson need to coordinate better. They’ll never array Italian-Americans against African-Americans with that kind of performance.
Only Thanksgiving and Xmas, but we get so many phone calls on those other days that we usually just answer the phone with “Thank you for calling (Store), open 24 hours.”
Announced? How, by the internet? That’s pretty much the whole point of Juneteenth! They were free, and nobody told them. For 6 months. What good is 12/18/1865 being your date of freedom if no one tells you? Sure, it applied to a small subset of the former-slave population, but how can anyone celebrate when they know that some of their brothers and sisters are still in chains? There is no more suitable day for the holiday than June 19th.
You have your chronology confused. 6/19/1865 was the date the last Confederate holdouts in Texas were occupied and the slaves there liberated. 12/18/1865, six months later, was the date the ratified Thirteenth Amendment was officially proclaimed. Whatever the abstract logical merits of celebrating one or the other date, it is the former that has picked up enough of a following to become a holiday.
Thanks. I definitely mixed the years when reading the wiki page. Mea culpa.
A couple of things that I’ve come across on the Interwebs as Juneteenth traditions:
Strawberry pop (and other red items like red velvet cake, watermelon, red beans & rice), family BBQs, fishing, rodeos. Kinda short notice to organize a rodeo, but maybe a BBQ with some strawberry pop. Other foods like black eyed peas, cornbread, collards, potato salad are also good for a Juneteenth menu.
Source: Oprah.