Senate Unanimously Passes Bill To Make Juneteenth A National Holiday

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History was made on Capitol Hill earlier today as members of the United States Senate voted unanimously to establish Juneteenth as a national holiday.

The bill passed after Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin dropped his objection to the bill earlier in the day. With that said, Johnson didn’t appear to be fully in favor of the bill itself. Rather, he just didn’t want to be known as the only Senator who stood in the way of making it a federal holiday.

“It sounds like Congress wants to do it so I’m not going to stand in the way,” Johnson told HuffPost after the bill passed.

“I just think it’s kind of odd that now apparently the only way to do [celebrate the end of slavery] is to give 2 million federal workers a paid day off, cost American taxpayers $600 million.”

Juneteenth is an annual holiday that recognizes the moment in 1865 when Union General Gordon Granger informed the last enslaved people in the state of Texas that former President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Originally, the Juneteenth holiday was celebrated in Texas, but it spread throughout the country as Black communities began to emerge across the map. Fittingly, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas joined activist Opal Lee in leading the charge to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. After years of hard work, they succeeding in their ultimate goal.

“[I am] appy that my bill to recognize Juneteenth as a national holiday just passed the Senate,” Sen. John Cornyn tweeted.

“It has been a state holiday in Texas for more than 40 years. Now more than ever, we need to learn from our history and continue to form a more perfect union.”

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