when did Juneteenth become a national holiday?

[wayxpython]

[Toasty B]

when

[Milldawg]

I first heard of it about 5 years ago

[GriffWoody]

My employer embraces the day…holiday next Wednesday. I’ll be working.

[dncdawg]

Biden signed it into law in 2021.

[RockmartDawg]

Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law during his first year in office, with it becoming effective in 2021.

My cynical mind is waiting for it to become the "new" Independence Day. July 4th will more and more just be known as "July 4th". I actually didn't know that the legislation to create the Juneteenth holiday contains "National Independence Day".

Interestingly, the history taught says that it was June 19, 1865 that a U.S. army officer commanded the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas, which is what they recognize as their end of slavery. But, if they were enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation (which, first of all, was not any form of legislation... it was an executive order issued by the president), then by the very letter of the document it was NOT applied nationally.

The Emancipation Proclamation is actually an extremely short, brief document. When Lincoln issued it in September 1862, it supposedly taking effect in January 1863, it drew lots of ridicule from European political leaders, saying that he is claiming to declare slaves to be free in territories where he has no legal authority, yet he specifically omits slaves within territories where he has full authority. In other words, it was nothing but a political stunt, a war measure, with the intent of trying to incite a slave rebellion within the states fighting against the United States. He even omitted parts of the South that had by that time come under control of the U.S. army.

Key segments of the document:

That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.

Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth)] and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

So, then, if Juneteenth is based upon the Emancipation Proclamation, then it is only effective in the parts of the country explicitly stated in the farce document, and those exceptions that were listed, do not apply. Slavery was then  legal in Washington, DC, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri. It didn't apply there, although they ended it in Washington, DC in 1862 by passing legislation that PAID the slave owners to compensate for their loss of property, and also including funding by which any freed slave who wished could go to Liberia (that's another history that isn't talked about... Liberia was founded by the United States, in cooperation with the American Colonization Society, as a place to send all of the Africans back to Africa).

Also, if the Emancipation Proclamation was binding law, then why was the 13th Amendment to the constitution submitted and ratified in 1868? THAT is what ended slavery in the United States. The Emancipation Proclamation, on its legal basis, freed exactly zero slaves.