Virginia Governor Ralph Northam announced Tuesday that he’s making Juneteenth — a day that commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S. — an official holiday in a state that was once home to the capital of the Confederacy.
Juneteenth, which is also called Emancipation Day and Freedom Day, is celebrated annually on June 19.
Northam was joined on Tuesday at his news conference by musician Pharrell Williams, who is from Virginia. Williams said Juneteenth deserves the same level of recognition and celebration as Independence Day.
‘Here’s our day, and if you love us, it’ll be your day too,’ Williams said.
‘This is a very special moment. Very special. This is a big display of progress, and I’m grateful for Virginia and us leading the way,’ Williams said on Tuesday.
Performing artist and Virginia native Pharrell Williams, right, speaks about the plan to make Juneteenth a state holiday as Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, left, listens during a press briefing inside the Patrick Henry Building in Richmond, Virginia on Tuesday
In a statement, state House Republican Leader Todd Gilbert echoed the same sentiments.
‘July 4th is the birthday of our nation, but Juneteenth is the day where it truly began to fulfill its promise of freedom for all,’ Gilbert said. ‘For the first time since enslaved Africans landed at Jamestown in 1619, the chains of bondage were finally cast off.’
Joseph Rogers, a 29-year-old activist who has been a regular protester in Richmond during more than two weeks of demonstrations over Floyd’s killing, hailed Northam’s announcement.
‘It’s a step in the right direction,’ said Rogers.
Texas first made it a state holiday in 1980. The holiday would be a paid day off for all state employees. Northam said he thinks Virginia would be only the second state to do so.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, right, is joined by a group of lawmakers and others including artist Pharrell Williams, center, in shorts and hat, during a press briefing
Virginia Gov Ralph Northam is proposing to make Juneteenth an official paid, state holiday
‘It’s time we elevate this. We are changing what we honor in Virginia,’ Governor Northam said of the June 19 commemoration. ‘Not just a celebration by and for some Virginians but one acknowledged and celebrated by all of us.’
‘That’s how important this event is. It finally shut the door on the enslavement of African-American people. And while it did not end racism, black oppression or violence – it is an important symbol. By commemorating it, we push people to think about the significance of Juneteenth,’ he said.
The Democratic governor is giving every executive branch employee this Friday off as a paid holiday and will work with the legislature later this year to pass a law codifying Juneteenth as a permanent state holiday. The legislation is likely to pass the Democratic-controlled legislature with little trouble.
The governor announced his plan to make Juneteenth (June 19th), a state holiday. It marks the day in 1865 that the last slaves in Texas learned of the Emancipation Proclamation, two years earlier
‘Here’s our day, and if you love us, it’ll be your day too,’ Pharrell Williams said. ‘This is a very special moment. Very special. This is a big display of progress, and I’m grateful for Virginia and us leading the way,’
The holiday commemorates June 19, 1865, when news finally reached African Americans in Texas that President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves living in Confederate states two years earlier. When Union soldiers arrived in Galveston to bring the news that slavery had been abolished, former slaves celebrated.
The announcement came less than two weeks after Northam announced he was ordering the removal of a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee along Richmond’s prominent Monument Avenue. It is one of the country’s most iconic monuments to the Confederacy. Earlier this year, Northam signed legislation scrapping Lee-Jackson Day, a state holiday named after two Confederate generals.
Governor Ralph Northam said the new status for the holiday is primarily symbolic – but he hopes it will be a step toward social justice in the Commonwealth.
Nearly forced from office last year after a racist yearbook surfaced, Northam has won widespread praise among black lawmakers for his actions in Virginia following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a Minneapolis officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck as he pleaded for air.
President Donald Trump announced last week that he has rescheduled a campaign rally that was planned in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Juneteenth.
The announcement of the rally had sparked an outcry because Tulsa was the site of one of the worst instances of racial violence in U.S. history in 1921, when hundreds of African Americans were massacred by a white mob that burned black-owned businesses and homes.