Most federal offices are closed on federal holidays, along with most banks and the bond markets that trade in U.S. It is now one of 11 official federal holidays – or 12 for federal workers in the District of Columbia and surrounding areas during presidential inauguration years – meaning that federal workers get a paid day off and there’s no mail delivery. It commemorates the day, more than two months after the end of the Civil War – and more than two years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation – when enslaved Black Americans in Galveston, Texas, were informed of their freedom. Juneteenth is a combination of the words June and nineteenth. It is one of at least three states where a governor’s proclamation has designated the state holiday.

Kay Ivey authorized Juneteenth as a holiday for state workers this year and in 2021, but the Legislature there must pass a law for it to become a permanent official state holiday. In Illinois, state workers get a paid holiday for Juneteenth only if it falls on a weekday. New Mexico’s Legislature added Juneteenth as an official state holiday in 2006, observed on the third Saturday of June it became a paid holiday for state workers for the first time in 2022. We supplemented those lists with an analysis of news reports about local observances of Juneteenth.

Our main sources for this analysis were state administrative, personnel and human-resources websites, most of which post lists of official state holidays. We decided to focus on states that observe Juneteenth as an official public holiday – meaning that state offices are closed and state workers get a paid day off. We took a look at which states have adopted Juneteenth as an official state holiday, designated it as a day of observance or done something in between. Juneteenth is the newest federal holiday in the United States, and one that is celebrated differently across the states.

An american slave