The newest Federal holiday on the calendar.
Juneteenth is celebrated annually to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States on this date in 1865. The holiday's name, first used in the 1890s, is a combination of the words "June" and "nineteenth" and refers to June 19, 1865, the day when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War.