In observance of the Juneteenth holiday, non-emergency facilities will be closed on Monday, June 20th. Our offices will open as usual on Tuesday, June 21st.
In February 2021, the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act was reintroduced by lawmakers in the House and Senate, following in the footsteps of Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who introduced a resolution for Juneteenth to be recognized as a federal holiday in 2020.
The Origins of Juneteenth
Some details about the origins of Juneteenth are lost to history, and many of those details that do survive only became more widely known later on.
On June 19, 1865—two and a half years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and two months after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox—the Union Army’s Maj. General Gordon Granger reached Galveston, Texas. There, he read aloud General Orders No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”