Today is Juneteenth

Source: The Washington Post / Getty

NATIONWIDE–Today is Juneteenth.  Wednesday’s observance is the third time millions of Americans are getting a paid day off as the nation commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S.

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 Gorden Granger and 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas and proclaimed that more than 250-thousand enslaved Black people in Texas were free.