CHICAGO (AP) — Illinois has become the latest state to make Juneteenth an official state holiday.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a proposal Wednesday near a rare copy of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Under Illinois law, state employees and educators will get June 19 as a paid if the holiday is during the weekday. Pritzker’s office says since Juneteenth is on a Sunday next year, the first paid holiday will be 2023.
Juneteenth commemorates the 1865 date when the last enslaved Black people in the U.S. learned from Union soldiers in Texas that they were free, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.
