KC Chiefs Will Observe Juneteenth

The Kansas City Chiefs announced on Monday, that they will observe Friday, June 19 as a holiday. As such their offices will be closed.

Their announcement coincides with a similar announcement made this week in which Jackson County Executive Frank White gave all Jackson County employees Friday off to participate in activities centering on Juneteenth.

This Juneteenth marks the 135th anniversary of Juneteenth, otherwise known as Emancipation Day or Freedom Day. Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when Major General Gordon Granger, along with 2,000 Union troops, rode into Galveston Bay, Texas, and told the enslaved Black people that they were free.1You read that date correctly. Even though these enslaved people were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, and the Civil War officially ended on April 9, 1965, 250,000 Black people were still kept in bondage in Texas until June 19, 1865.

Juneteenth has significant historical meaning for Black people in the U.S.—and Black people in Texas and the larger Gulf Coast region, in particular. In Houston’s Third Ward, near downtown, there’s Emancipation Park, which was founded by formerly enslaved Black people. Since the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement, the knowledge of this day, and its popularity, have grown.