5 Things Joe Biden Could’ve Addressed Instead of a Juneteenth Federal Holiday

Juneteenth is officially a federal holiday. President Joe Biden signed the surprisingly bipartisan bill which passed unanimously in the Senate with only 14 House Republicans opposing it. Biden said Juneteenth National Independence Day, as it has been named, is an example of how “great nations don’t walk away. We come to terms with the mistakes we made […] and grow stronger.”

For the uninitiated, Juneteenth is shorthand for June 19, 1865. On that day, Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas to deliver the message that the over 250,000 enslaved Black people were free and the Civil War was over.

Prior to Granger’s arrival, which was two months after the conclusion of the Civil War, slave owners were refusing to honor the Emancipation Proclamation. The Lone Star State was first in making Juneteenth a holiday, with at least 45 states since then acknowledging its importance.

I’m not complaining about a new federal holiday because I’ll accept any excuse to get paid while not going to work. And, I’m not a conspiracy theorist who thinks President Biden is signing this bill to turn our attention away from some other terrible thing that may or may not be coming down the pipeline.