Juneteenth, the nation's newest federal holiday, is celebrated by Americans on June 19 to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States, with a history dating back to the 1860s.

Juneteenth became an official federal holiday starting in 2021 under former President Joe Biden to recognize the freedom of formerly enslaved Black people. On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger led troops into Texas to announce the end of the Civil War and slavery.

It was 160 years ago that enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they had been freed — after Civil War's end and two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation