For the first time on Monday, Juneteenth will be recognized as both a state and federal holiday and on Monday:
all entities that are closed for federal holidays – including federal government offices, banks, schools and the U.S. Postal Service – will not be open.
Many state and local government offices will also be closed. Juneteenth is celebrated annually on June 19, to remember the day when word came in 1865, finally, to enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, that slavery had ended due to President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863.
Although Juneteenth was officially designated a federal holiday by the Biden administration in 2021, certain states and cities abide by their own regulations, with some having recognized the day as a state holiday before 2021. New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington, Oregon and Delaware have all made Juneteenth a state holiday —Juneteenth is the first new federal holiday since 1983, with Martin Luther King Jr. Day being the last to be instituted.