By KEVIN FREKING Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States will soon have a new federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery. President Joe Biden is scheduled to sign into law on Thursday a bill to make Juneteenth, or June 19th, the 12th federal holiday. The House approved the bill 415-14 on Wednesday. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers brought the news of freedom to enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas — two months after the Confederacy had surrendered. That was also about 2 1/2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in the Southern states. It’s the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created in 1983.