Story at a glance
- June 19 marks Juneteenth National Independence Day, a legal public holiday established by President Joe Biden last year.
- Federal employers are required to give Juneteenth off as a paid holiday, while private corporations don’t have to.
- A growing number of companies are offering Juneteenth off to their employees, including Nike, Target and Mastercard.
Monday marks the second year of Juneteenth National Independence Day as a federal holiday, and there’s a growing share of employers that are offering the day off.
Last year, President Biden signed a bill establishing Juneteenth as a new federal holiday — the first one established since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983 — making it the 12th legal public holiday in the U.S.
Federal employers are mandated to provide Juneteenth off to their employees as a paid holiday, while private companies can choose whether or not they’ll observe it.
So far, the signs are promising, as a new report by the International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plan indicates that 30 percent of private employers are offering Juneteenth as a paid holiday to their employees.
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When asked the same question in 2020, only 8 percent of private employers reported offering Juneteenth as a paid holiday, while 17 percent said they were considering adding it.
Target, Mastercard, Twitter, Nike, Adobe and Lyft are a handful of corporations that recognize and observe Juneteenth by giving employees a paid day off, according to the Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals (ACCP).
ACCP also encouraged employers to use Juneteenth as an opportunity to “put their words into action” and do more than simply issue official statements on racial equity — a trend that gained momentum in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd and led to subsequent calls for social justice and organization to reexamine their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Juneteenth is observed on June 19 as it commemorates the day in 1865 when the last of the enslaved people in the U.S. received the news that President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation two and a half years earlier. That meant all persons held as slaved were free under the law.
The historical date has grown more familiar among Americans with a Gallup poll finding only 25 percent of respondents surveyed indicated they knew “some” about Juneteenth in 2021 and by 2022 that jumped up to 42 percent.
That translates to about six in 10 U.S. adults now saying they know “a lot” or “some” about Juneteenth.
Though Gallup concluded that Juneteenth, “is still not greatly understood, if at all, by a sizable minority of the population, but given the relative newness of the holiday’s federal status, this could change.”
Organizations around the country are working to celebrate Juneteenth this year that could add to the public’s understanding of the newest federal holiday.
In Washington, D.C., The Juneteenth Foundation is hosting a four-day festival that will include a host of celebrities, including rappers T.I., Rick Ross and Big Sean as well as former NFL quarterback Michael Vick. There will also be a crowning ceremony to honor individuals that have, “paved the path for Black excellence in our culture.”
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