Originally celebrated by newly freed Black communities in Texas with religious services, barbecues and symbolic traditions like discarding clothing worn during enslavement, the holiday has since grown beyond Texas and the South.

Juneteenth, the nation's most recent federal holiday, is celebrated by Americans on June 19 to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States and has a history going back to the 1860s.

Juneteenth is currently a federal holiday and a state holiday in 46 states. South Carolina, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Oklahoma are the only Southern states that do not recognize Juneteenth as an official state holiday.