For the first time, all state offices in Louisiana will be closed to celebrate Juneteenth. It happens this Friday, June 17, 2022. We can all celebrate Juneteenth thanks to the state legislature and Governor John Bel Edwards.

2021 legislation made Juneteenth a legal holiday in Louisiana.

Governor Edwards signed  Act 128. That legislation designates the third Saturday in June as Juneteenth Day throughout the State of Louisiana. So this Friday, all state offices will close. From now on the Friday before Juneteenth Saturday is an official holiday.

“Juneteenth honors the day when enslaved Americans learned of their freedom, which is an important moment in American history and an appropriate one to honor with a state holiday,” Gov. Edwards said. “There is much work left to be done to ensure that all of our people are treated equally and fairly by the law, by our institutions and by each other, but it is my hope that Louisianans will take time on this day to reflect about the importance of freedom and equality and learn about the struggles of enslaved people in our country.”

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865 when Major General Gordon Granger led Union soldiers into Galveston, Texas. They brought the news that the Civil War had ended. They informed people of the Emancipation Proclamation. It declared all those enslaved had been freed nearly two and a half years earlier.

Click here to read the Governor’s proclamation.