(Undated) – Americans can expect some closures today because of Juneteenth. The day celebrating the end of slavery in the U.S. became a federal holiday in 2021, and this year June 19th falls on a Thursday, so expect no banks to be open today, and no mail delivery from the U.S. Postal Service. Federal offices will be closed, and so will the stock markets. Many state employees will be getting a paid day off, in those 28 states that recognize Juneteenth as a public holiday.
Most retailers will be open, but expect many pharmacies to be closed for the holiday.
The name of the holiday is a combination of June and 19th. President Abraham Lincoln freed enslaved African Americans when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863 and it became law later that year through the 13th Amendment. But slavery didn’t effectively end until June 19th, 1865 when Major General Gordon Granger and his two-thousand Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas and proclaimed that more than 250-thousand enslaved Black people in Texas were free.
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