Governor Kristi Noem has signed a bill that makes Juneteenth an official state holiday in South Dakota.
South Dakota is the last state to make June 19 a legal holiday with North Dakota approving legislation last April and Hawaii declaring the holiday with legislation in June
. Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the U-S. It’s the day in 1865 when a Union Army general officially announced to enslaved Black people in Galveston,Texas, they were free.
President Abraham Lincoln had freed all slaves in the Confederate States with the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, but couldn’t be enforced until the Union won the Civil War. The last battle of the war was fought in Texas in May 1865.