Recognition of Juneteenth, the effective end of slavery in the U.S., gained traction after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. But after an initial burst of action, the movement to have it recognized as an official holiday in the states has largely stalled.

Although almost every state recognizes Juneteenth in some fashion, many have been slow to do more than issue proclamations or resolutions, even as some continue to commemorate the Confederacy.

Lawmakers in Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and other states failed to advance proposals this year that would have closed state offices and given most of their public employees paid time off for the June 19 holiday.

That trend infuriates Black leaders and community organizers who view making Juneteenth a paid holiday the bare minimum state officials can do to help honor an often overlooked and ignored piece of American history.

“Juneteenth marks the date of major significance in American history. It represents the ways in which freedom for Black people have been delayed,” said Democratic Representative Anthony Nolan, who is Black, while arguing in favor of making Juneteenth a paid holiday in Connecticut on the House floor. “And if we delay this, it’s a smack in the face to Black folks.”

Juneteenth commemorates when Union soldiers brought the news of freedom to enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, in 1865, two months after the Confederacy had surrendered in the Civil War and about 2½ years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in Southern states.

Recognized officially in 2021

Last year, Congress and President Joe Biden moved swiftly to make Juneteenth a national holiday. It was the first time the federal government had designated a new national holiday since approving Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983. Yet the move didn’t result in an automatic adoption from most states.

In Alabama this week, Republican Governor Kay Ivey issued another proclamation making Juneteenth a state holiday after state lawmakers refused to act on a bill during their legislative session, even after she voiced strong support for making it a permanent holiday back in 2021. The state closes down for Confederate Memorial Day in April.

Similarly, Wyoming’s Republican Governor Mark Gordon issued a statement last June saying he would work with lawmakers to make it a state holiday, but no legislation was filed during the 2022 session.

In Tennessee, Republican Governor Bill Lee quietly tucked enough funding — roughly $700,000 — to make Juneteenth a state paid holiday in his initial spending plan for the upcoming year. The bill did gain traction in the state Senate, yet GOP legislative leaders maintained there wasn’t enough support for the idea, even as Tennessee law currently designates special observances for Robert E. Lee Day, Confederate Decoration Day, and Nathan Bedford Forrest Day.

“I asked many people in my district over the last few days, well over 100 people, if they knew what Juneteenth was and only two of them knew,” said Republican Senator Joey Hensley, who is white and voted against the proposal. “I just think we’re putting the cart before the horse making a holiday that people don’t know about.”

In South Carolina, instead of working to approve Juneteenth as a holiday, Senate lawmakers unanimously advanced a bill that would allow state employees to choose any day they want to take off instead of the Confederate Memorial Day currently enshrined as a paid holiday in state law. However, the House sent the bill to a committee, where it died without a hearing when the Legislature adjourned for the session.

At the same time, many of these Republican-led areas have advanced bills limiting what can be taught about systematic racism in classrooms, while also spiking proposals aimed at expanding voting rights and police reform.

Six recent adoptions

This year, nearly 20 states are expected to close state offices and give most of their public employees time off. At least six states officially adopted the holiday over the past few months, including Connecticut, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, South Dakota, Utah and Washington. A bill introduced in California passed the Assembly and moved to the Senate this month, and individual cities such as Los Angeles have already signed proclamations making Juneteenth official.

“Becoming a state holiday will not merely give employees a day off, it will also give residents a day to think about the future that we want, while remembering the inequities of the past,” said Democratic Delegate Andrea Harrison, who sponsored the Juneteenth legislation in Maryland this year. “It will help us to reflect how far we’ve come as a nation, how much more we need to do as humankind.”

Attempts to give Juneteenth the same deference as Memorial Day or July Fourth didn’t begin to gain traction until 2020, when protests sparked a nationwide push to address race after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the deaths of other Black people by police officers.

“George Floyd protests against police brutality brought awareness to Juneteenth because there were people of all races learning about its significance for the first time following a public push to self-educate and learn more about Black history, culture and injustices,” said Tremaine Jasper, a resident and business owner in Phoenix who has attended Juneteenth celebrations across Arizona with his family.

Some cities in Arizona, including Phoenix, have declared Juneteenth an official holiday, paying city employees and closing municipal buildings. However, lawmakers are not currently considering statewide recognition.

“There are so many other important issues that we need to tackle — education, political issues, reparations — before we prioritize making Juneteenth a statewide holiday,” Jasper said, noting that those looking to celebrate know where to go.

Jasper, who was born and raised in Arizona, said it is going to be an “uphill battle” to get the state to recognize Juneteenth because there is not a large enough Black population outside its largest cities to make the push.

Arizona was also slow in recognizing Martin Luther King Jr. Day, not doing so until 1992. It was one of the last states to officially recognize the civil rights leader.
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An 18-year-old from South Korea has won the 16th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, one of the top showcases for the world’s best pianists. 

The competition held in Fort Worth, Texas, ended Saturday night with Yunchan Lim becoming the competition’s youngest winner of the gold medal. His winnings include a cash award of $100,000 and three years of career management. 

The silver medalist was Anna Geniushene, a 31-year-old from Russia, and the bronze medalist is Dmytro Choni, a 28-year-old from Ukraine. 

Lim told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he’ll discuss with his teacher what the next move for his career should be. 

“I am still a student and I feel like I have to learn a lot still,” Lim said. “This is a great competition and I feel the burden of receiving this great honor and award so I will just push myself to live up to the honor I received today.” 

The competition was founded in 1962 in honor of the celebrated pianist Van Cliburn, who lived in Fort Worth. Cliburn, who died in 2013 at age 78, played for U.S. presidents, royalty and heads of state around the world. He is best remembered for winning the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958, at the height of the Cold War. 

The competition is traditionally held every four years. This year’s competition was originally scheduled for last year but was postponed due to the pandemic.
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Two men have been charged with murder in a house explosion near St. Louis that authorities say killed four people who were assembling fireworks in a garage.

St. Louis County prosecutors say Terrell Cooks, 37, and Seneca Mahan, 43, made fireworks and directed younger people on how to load the canisters and attach a fuse for lighting. They would then sell the fireworks to others. Neither Cooks nor Mahan had a license to make or sell fireworks.

Cooks and Mahan are each charged with three counts of second-degree murder and several other charges in Friday’s explosion near the town of Black Jack. They were charged before a fourth victim died Saturday.

The victims in the powerful blast that shook other homes and blew out neighbors’ windows were identified as Travell Eason, 16; Christopher Jones, 17; Damario Cooks, 18; and William Jones, 21.

Authorities have said a 12-year-old child was also injured in the explosion, but the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that police could not provide details Sunday about how many others were still hospitalized.

Cooks and Martin were being held on a $350,000 cash bail. Online court records had not listed the cases yet, so it wasn’t clear if the men had attorneys who could comment on the charges.

Court documents said Cooks admitted that he and Mahan made explosive devices designed to make a loud bang and bright flash. Investigators saw Cooks moving boxes of chemicals used to make explosives to his vehicle after Friday’s explosion, and they found large quantities of “completed explosive weapons and components to manufacture them” when they searched a home and other vehicles connected to Cooks. 
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Sunday is Father’s Day in the United States. The holiday is observed every year on the third Sunday of June.

The day is an occasion for families to celebrate fathers. Many families shower them with gifts, while restaurants are full of families taking fathers out for a meal.

According to History.com, the first Father’s Day was observed on July 5, 1908, when a West Virginia church held a service in memory of 362 men who had died in December in explosions at the Fairmont Coal Company mines in Monongah. However, this was a one-time event and not an annual affair.

The following year, History reports, Sonora Smart Dodd, a woman who lived in Spokane, Washington, and who was one of six children raised by her father, a widower, began canvassing her community for support for the annual observance of Father’s Day. She was successful and in 1910, Washington state celebrated the first statewide observance of Father’s Day in the country.

The observance of Father’s Day spread slowly across the nation. but now, History says, Americans spend more than $1 billion each year on Father’s Day gifts.
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Sam Roberts and his family are planning for Juneteenth, the newest U.S. holiday commemorating the 1865 emancipation of Black enslaved people at the end of the Civil War.

On Sunday, the Roberts family and other Americans will attend celebrations and observances. It’s part of a growing national recognition of a pivotal moment in U.S. history that’s been a part of the fabric of Black culture for generations.

“Juneteenth is our Freedom Day and African American communities have been celebrating June 19th for a long time,” said Roberts, a father of two from Washington, D.C. It’s the second national observance of the holiday since Congress authorized it and U.S. President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law last year.

“While July 4th is the celebration of freedom for the United States, Juneteenth is a celebration of freedom for African Americans after the Civil War,” said Jesse Holland, an author and Black historian.

The push for a Juneteenth federal holiday came amid the popularity of the Black Lives Matter movement and a year after nationwide protests against racism and police brutality. It followed the murder of African-American George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer in 2020. Since then, the annual celebration has taken on a new meaning for some in the Black community.

“Juneteenth reminds Black Americans we still face the challenges of hate and discrimination our ancestors endured,” Roberts said. “We have to redouble our quest for equality.”

Some historians believe greater awareness of Juneteenth will encourage forward leaning conversations among Americans about race relations and the legacies of slavery.

A national public opinion survey suggests most Americans believe Black people today have been affected by the history of slavery and that the federal government has a responsibility to address those effects, according to the poll by the Gallup Center on Black Voices.

Additionally, the poll found Americans who think the government is responsible generally believe all Black Americans, rather than just those descended from slaves, should benefit from programs to address the effects of slavery.

“Not every African American in the United States are descendants of slaves, but for the large majority of us who are, Juneteenth is the time for us to take stock of who we are today, where we came from and the sacrifices our ancestors went through before and since the Civil War,” Holland told VOA.

Freedom declarations

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, a declaration following the end of the Civil War that legally freed more than three million enslaved Blacks in Confederate States. But not all slaves were free because the proclamation could not be implemented in parts of the southern United States.

To enforce the proclamation, Union Army Major General Gordon Granger marched into Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, to issue the “General Order Number 3,” which ended the enslavement of Blacks in Texas. The mandate freed an estimated 250,000 slaves two-and-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.

“White Texans knew the Civil War was [over] and slavery was banned, but they didn’t tell their slaves the war was over for years [in order] to continue to get free labor out of them,” said Holland. “Juneteenth is when the lie ended and federal forces showed up to enforce the new federal law saying slavery was illegal in the United States.”

While Juneteenth is celebrated as the end of slavery, the practice of involuntary servitude continued briefly in the states of Delaware and Kentucky. On December 6, 1865, ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery in the United States.

Juneteenth awareness

The first events commemorating Juneteenth date to 1866, when former slaves celebrated their new freedom with prayer, feasting, song, and dance. The anniversary saw a decline in popularity in the 1950’s and 60’s as Black Americans focused on the civil rights movement and ending racial discrimination. Juneteenth saw a revival in the 1980’s when Texas became the first state to declare the date a state holiday. Other communities across the U.S. slowly began to adopt the annual observance as a public holiday.

Much of the success in galvanizing support for a national holiday is credited to African American activist Opal Lee, known as “the grandmother of Juneteenth.” As a child, Lee witnessed a group of 500 white supremacists vandalize and burn her family’s home to the ground. The life-changing moment led her to a life of teaching and activism.

In 2016, at age 89, she began a walking campaign, traveling hundreds of kilometers from her hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C., to press for a Juneteenth federal holiday. At 95, Lee is delighted Juneteenth is gaining national attention. She will march again Sunday to celebrate the holiday.

“It’s important people recognize Juneteenth,” Lee said in an interview with D Magazine last month. “It is not a Black thing, it’s not just a Texas thing, but it’s about freedom for everybody.”

Today’s Juneteenth celebrations often feature music festivals, parades or a march. The observances also focus on teachings about African American heritage, political participation, and economic empowerment.

“On the 19th we gather for cookouts, dance, and share stories of the Black experience,” Roberts told VOA. His family has attended Juneteenth festivities for decades. “This year we have two days of events on Sunday and Monday, the day the federal holiday falls on,” he said. The holiday has become a summertime ritual for the Roberts and one of a few holidays they observe.

In Utah, Juneteenth is being designated as a state holiday for the first time after lawmakers approved a bill earlier this year. “I am so thrilled to see us, as a state, embrace this holiday,” said Utah State Legislator Sandra Hollins. “For me it means a lot. It means my culture mattered and it means that we get to celebrate a holiday that has been overlooked in this state.” Several festivities will take place in the capital, Salt Lake City.

Nearly all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia now observe Juneteenth. Historian Holland believes it’s a clear sign of national recognition and acceptance.

“Juneteenth is American history and everyone should be able to celebrate it, including people of all races, colors and creeds.”
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After two days of deliberations in which they reached verdicts on nearly all of the questions put before them, jurors in a civil trial who were deciding on sexual abuse allegations against Bill Cosby will have to start from scratch on Monday.

By the end of the court day Friday, the Los Angeles County jury had come to agreement on whether Cosby had sexually assaulted plaintiff Judy Huth at the Playboy Mansion when she was 16 in 1975, and whether Huth deserved any damages. In all they had answered eight of nine questions on their verdict form, all but one that asked whether Cosby acted in a way that should require punitive damages.

Judge Craig Karlan, who had promised one juror when she agreed to serve that she could leave after Friday for a prior commitment, decided over the objections of Cosby’s attorneys to accept and read the verdict on the questions the jury had answered. But he had to change course when deputies at the Santa Monica Courthouse appeared and required him to clear the courtroom. The courthouse has a required closure time of 4:30 p.m. because of no budget for deputies’ overtime.

Karlan refused to require the departing juror, who had been chosen as foreperson, to return on Monday, so jurors will have to begin again with an alternate in her place.

“I won’t go back on my word,” Karlan said.

It was a bizarre ending to a strange day of jury deliberations. It began with a note to the judge about what he called a “personality issue” between two of the jurors that was making their work difficult.

After calling them to the courtroom and getting them to agree that every juror would be heard in discussions, the jurors resumed, but had a steady flurry of questions on issues with their verdict form that the judge and attorneys had to discuss and answer. One question was on how to calculate damages.

After the lunch break, Cosby lawyer Jennifer Bonjean moved for a mistrial because of a photo taken by a member of Cosby’s team that showed a juror standing in close proximity to a Cosby accuser who had been sitting in the audience and watching the trial.

Karlan said the photo didn’t indicate any conversation had happened, and quickly dismissed the mistrial motion, getting assurances from the juror in question, then the entire jury, that no one had discussed the case with them.

The accuser, Los Angeles artist Lily Bernard, who has filed her own lawsuit against Cosby in New Jersey, denied speaking to any jurors.

“I never spoke to any juror, ever,” Bernard told the judge from her seat in the courtroom. “I would never do anything to jeopardize this case. I don’t even look at them.”

Karlan fought to get past the hurdles and have jurors deliberate as long as possible, and kept lawyers, reporters and court staff in the courtroom ready to bolt as soon as a verdict was read, but it was fruitless in the end.

Jurors had begun deliberating Thursday morning after a two-week trial.

Cosby, 84, who was freed from prison when his Pennsylvania criminal conviction was thrown out nearly a year ago, did not attend. He denied any sexual contact with Huth in a clip from a 2015 video deposition shown to jurors. The denial has been repeated throughout the trial by his spokesperson and his attorney.

In contentious closing arguments, Bonjean urged the jurors to look past the public allegations against Cosby and consider only the trial evidence, which she said did not come close to proving Huth’s case.

Huth’s attorney Nathan Goldberg told jurors Cosby had to be held accountable for the harm he had done to his client.

The Associated Press does not normally name people who say they have been sexually abused, unless they come forward publicly, as Huth and Bernard each have. 
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