Bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday clears Congress; Biden to sign it tomorrow

Well, that was fast!

Leg­is­la­tion that would make June­teenth a fed­er­al hol­i­day has cleared the Unit­ed States Con­gress by an extreme­ly lop­sided mar­gin, with only a few extrem­ist, most­ly white suprema­cist House Repub­li­cans in opposition.

By a vote of four hun­dred and four­teen to four­teen, the House signed off on S. 475, which the Sen­ate passed by unan­i­mous con­sent less than thir­ty hours ago after the odi­ous Ron John­son of Wis­con­sin dropped his objection.

The roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west was unanimous:

Vot­ing Aye: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Derek Kilmer, Prami­la Jaya­pal, Kim Schri­er, Mar­i­lyn Strick­land (WA), Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Earl Blu­me­nauer, Peter DeFazio, and Kurt Schrad­er (OR); Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler, Dan New­house, Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers (WA), Cliff Bentz (OR), Russ Fulcher and Mike Simp­son (ID), Don Young (AK), Matt Rosendale (MT)

S. 475 now heads to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s desk. Biden, who has just returned from his first trip over­seas as Pres­i­dent, will be sign­ing it tomor­row at 12:30 PM Pacif­ic in an East Room cer­e­mo­ny with Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris, the White House announced in a sched­ul­ing note ear­li­er this evening.

Biden and Har­ris will both offer remarks.

“With this step, Con­gress is ensur­ing that one of the most momen­tous events in our his­to­ry, which has been cel­e­brat­ed by mil­lions, par­tic­u­lar­ly Black Amer­i­cans, for 150 years now is offi­cial­ly rec­og­nized, that it is enshrined in our his­to­ry books and it takes its place of hon­or in our nation,” said Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi.

“June­teenth is a beau­ti­ful and proud cel­e­bra­tion of free­dom for Black Amer­i­cans. It marks the day, two years after Pres­i­dent Lin­coln issued the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion, when Major Gen­er­al Gor­don Granger and Union sol­diers deliv­ered the news of lib­er­a­tion in Galve­ston, Texas.”

“Over the past cen­tu­ry and half, June­teenth has evolved into a day of not only cel­e­bra­tion, but of reflec­tion. This day reminds us of a his­to­ry much stained by bru­tal­i­ty and injus­tice and reminds us of our respon­si­bil­i­ty to build a future of progress for all, hon­or­ing the ide­al of equal­i­ty that is Amer­i­ca’s her­itage and Amer­i­ca’s hope,” the Speak­er added, hail­ing the per­sis­tent efforts of the Con­gres­sion­al Black Cau­cus to make the occa­sion a fed­er­al holiday.

“I applaud my House col­leagues for the swift pas­sage of the June­teenth Nation­al Inde­pen­dence Day Act, com­pan­ion leg­is­la­tion to H.R. 1320, which I intro­duced to make June­teenth a fed­er­al hol­i­day to com­mem­o­rate the end of chat­tel slav­ery, Amer­i­ca’s Orig­i­nal Sin, and to cel­e­brate he per­se­ver­ance that has been the hall­mark of the African Amer­i­can strug­gle for equal­i­ty,” said Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Sheila Jack­son Lee (D‑Texas), who presided over the House vote on S. 475.

Most states already rec­og­nize June­teenth as a hol­i­day. Wash­ing­ton has done so since 2007, although June­teenth only became a paid hol­i­day for state work­ers very recent­ly with the enact­ment of House Bill 1016 last month.

June­teenth cel­e­bra­tions in the Pacif­ic North­west date back much fur­ther than that. The June­teenth arti­cle on Wikipedia notably con­tains a copy of a fly­er for a June­teenth cel­e­bra­tion at Seat­tle Cen­ter dat­ing back to 1980.

As Speak­er Pelosi men­tioned in her above­quot­ed floor remarks, this rich­ly his­toric and joy­ous hol­i­day orig­i­nat­ed in Texas, where enslaved Black peo­ple received the news that slav­ery had been abol­ished from Union troops led by Major Gen­er­al Gor­don Granger. Slav­ery had been abol­ished months pri­or in the coun­try’s rebelling states by order of Pres­i­dent Lin­coln, but Lin­col­n’s order did­n’t become effec­tive across the South until Union troops arrived to enforce it.

“A grass­roots cel­e­bra­tion high­light­ed by joy­ous singing, pig roasts, and rodeos, June­teenth took root in many African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties dur­ing the late 19th cen­tu­ry. But June­teenth was nev­er accord­ed offi­cial respect or recog­ni­tion,” a Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine arti­cle from a decade ago explained.

That, of course, is about to change, with the sign­ing of S. 475. Once this bill becomes a law, no longer will June­teenth be rec­og­nized only at the state level.

With fed­er­al recog­ni­tion, we can expect a lot more media cov­er­age and obser­vances of June­teenth going for­ward. Hope­ful­ly, that leads to a greater under­stand­ing and aware­ness among all Amer­i­cans of this coun­try’s racist past and the cru­cial­ly impor­tant antiracist move­ments that have been seek­ing to lib­er­ate all oppressed peo­ples from the scourges of big­otry and injustice.