New US holiday

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden signed a bill into law yesterday to make June 19 a federal holiday commemorating the end of the legal enslavement of black Americans.

The bill, which was passed by the US House of Representatives on Wednesday after a unanimous vote in the Senate, marks the day in 1865 when a Union general informed a group of enslaved people in Texas that they were made free two years earlier by President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War.

It is the 11th federal holiday, joining a list that includes Christmas, New Year’s Day, as well as days honouring presidents and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.