Governor Kristi Noem is announcing a holiday for state workers on Friday, June 18, in honor of Juneteenth.
It’s in response to the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, which was signed Thursday by President Joe Biden.
Noem says Juneteenth celebrates an important day when the country came closer to making the ideal that ‘all men are created equal” a reality.
The Republican-controlled South Dakota state legislature rejected proposals to make Juneteenth both a state and working holiday.
Democratic State Senator Reynold Nesiba brought the bill making Juneteenth a state holiday. It failed in a Senate committee. Nesiba calls the governor’s decision to give state employees the day off an appropriate reaction to the new federal holiday.
“What I liked about this holiday is that it is America’s holiday,” Nesiba says. “It’s a recognition that we had to have an Emancipation Day and a recognition that we were a country founded in slavery and that we’re still working through the complex legacy of that terrible institution.”
Juneteenth is celebrated every year on June 19. It commemorates the date in 1865, when General Gordon Granger announced freedom from slavery in Galveston, Texas following President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.