The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford will be closed Monday, June 20, in observance of the Juneteenth Holiday.
This is the first year that the University of Pittsburgh has marked Juneteenth as a holiday, which it is marking on Monday since June 19 is on a Sunday. President Joe Biden declared Juneteenth, considered the longest-running African American holiday, a federal holiday in 2021.
Juneteenth – short for “June Nineteenth” and often referred to as a Black Independence or Jubilee Day – commemorates the effective end of slavery in America.
On June 19, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and brought news to hundreds of thousands of enslaved people that they were freed. President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation Jan. 1, 1863, but news didn’t reach Texas for 2 1/2 more years. Emancipation Day celebrations began in 1866.