As Americans across the country get ready to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday, this year also marks the fifth anniversary of Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday.
Juneteenth honors June 19, 1865, when Union troops landed in Galveston, Texas, and announced the end of slavery.
On June 17, 2021, former President Joe Biden signed bipartisan legislation that made Juneteenth the 11th federal holiday.
But five years later, not all states recognize Juneteenth as a paid day off for state employees.
Juneteenth falls on a Friday this year, giving all nonessential federal government workers the day off. While federal holidays guarantee a paid day off work for nonessential federal employees, individual states decide which federal holidays to follow.
Although every state celebrates or acknowledges Juneteenth in some fashion, only 31 — and Washington, D.C. — recognize it as a permanent paid holiday, according to a 2025 Congressional Research Service report. Alabama was the most recent state to do so in May 2025.
Some of the states that haven’t made Juneteenth a permanent holiday have devised alternative ways of acknowledging the occasion without necessarily making it a permanent paid holiday. New Mexico, for example, must newly declare Juneteenth as a paid day off each year. Some North Carolina state employees can use a day of personal paid leave for “cultural or religious importance” on Juneteenth.
In other states, such as Kansas and Kentucky, governors have declared the day a state holiday, yet that status isn’t protected by local law.
Across the country, private companies are not required to give workers the day off, but an estimated 41% of employers with 500 or more employees do, according to a 2024 survey by consulting firm Mercer.
In his second term, President Donald Trump’s administration hasn’t said much about the holiday. Neither the White House nor Trump celebrated Juneteenth in 2025. The National Park Service also drew criticism from organizations including the NAACP when it removed Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Jr. Day from its list of holidays when people can visit national parks for free. Added to the list, however, was June 14 — Flag Day and Trump’s birthday.
Celebrations honoring African-American history will take place across the country, but one state has been commemorating Juneteenth longer than the rest: Texas.
The first Juneteenth and the history of its celebration
President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, but it wasn’t until more than two years later that it became a reality in Texas, the last bastion of the Confederacy. The war ended on April 19, 1865, but enslaved people there didn’t immediately learn of the Confederacy’s surrender.
On June 19, 1865, Union Gen. Gordon Granger landed in Galveston. Granger’s men marched through the city reading General Order No. 3 at municipal buildings and churches, declaring that all enslaved people were now free.
Awareness of Juneteenth around the country grew as Black people migrated from the South in the years after the Civil War, said historian Mitch Kachun, author of “First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory.” By 1920, over 17,000 Black Texans had moved to other states. During World War II, thousands more relocated further west to find work in defense industries.
“As Black Texans set down new roots in other regions, they carried along both their struggles for economic and social justice and their Juneteenth traditions,” Kachun wrote.
The social justice overtones of Juneteenth became more prominent through the 1950s and 1960s. But the 1968 Poor People’s March on Washington solidified the connection between Juneteenth and the Civil Rights movement.
The march started hundreds of miles from the nation’s capital a few weeks after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Its messaging drew on an Oklahoman story that a Black Union soldier traveled by mule to share word of emancipation outward from Texas.
The march ended with a ceremony attended by about 50,000 at the Lincoln Memorial on June 19.
Juneteenth.com, one of several efforts to promote recognition of the day, cites the 1968 march as a reason for large annual marches in Milwaukee and Minneapolis.
After decades of informal celebrations, the Texas Legislature made Juneteenth a state holiday in 1980, and more than 40 years later, the federal government followed.
Former PolitiFact staff writers Jon Greenberg and Ellie Borst contributed to this report.
