Juneteenth was made an official holiday on June 17, 2021 when President Biden signed it into law. When President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862.

It became effective on January 1, 1863, declaring that all enslaved persons in the Confederate States of America in rebellion and not in Union hands were freed. It was not until June 19, 1865 when General Robert S. Granger of the union army notified blacks in Texas that they were in fact free. It had been an unofficial holiday since then.