US President Joe Biden will sign a law Thursday marking the announcement of a new national holiday, the day commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.
This day would be commemorated every year on June 19th.
In 1865 Union soldiers informed a group of African-American slaves in Galveston, Texas, that they were already free, about two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Declaration on the Release of Slaves.
Currently many American states have declared the day known as the Juneteenth.
This day is expected to join 10 other federal holidays and is the first to be added since the day commemorating the birth of U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. became a federal holiday in 1983.
The bill announcing the date as a holiday arrives on President Biden’s table after it was approved by his bloc in the Senate on Tuesday and an overwhelming majority vote in favor of it Wednesday in the House of Representatives, which resulted in 415 votes in favor and 14 against.
