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San Francisco Chronicle
12 hours ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Juneteenth 2025: What's open and closed in California
As California and the Bay Area prepare to observe Juneteenth on Thursday, residents can expect closures across many government services while most commercial businesses remain open. The day, which became a federal holiday in 2021, commemorates the end of slavery in the United States and has grown in national prominence over the past several years. Juneteenth marks the anniversary of June 19, 1865, when Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and issued General Order No. 3, proclaiming that all enslaved African Americans in the state were free. Though President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had gone into effect more than two years earlier, it could not be enforced in Confederate-held areas until Union troops arrived. While many Americans now have the day off, the landscape of what remains open and closed is a patchwork — especially across California. Are banks open on Juneteenth 2025? Major U.S. banks — including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank and PNC — will shutter their branches on Thursday in accordance with the Federal Reserve's holiday calendar. Capital One Cafés, however, plan to remain open. Online banking services and ATMs will still be operational. Trading on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq will be suspended for the day. Will mail and shipping services operate on Juneteenth? UPS and FedEx will operate on normal schedules. Both companies confirmed they will offer regular pickup and delivery services, and their respective store locations will be open. Customers are advised to check with local branches for specific hours. Which government offices are closed for Juneteenth? All federal offices, including immigration services, Social Security offices and the Internal Revenue Service, will be closed. In California, most state offices — such as the Department of Motor Vehicles — will remain open. While Juneteenth is recognized as a holiday, it is not a paid day off for state employees, though they may choose to use a personal day to observe it. Many city and county offices in the Bay Area will close for the day, including most courthouses and public libraries. Residents planning to attend to any local governmental business are urged to check in advance. Trash and recycling pickup services will operate on a normal schedule in most Bay Area cities. Residents should place their bins out as usual unless notified otherwise by their local waste management provider. Is public transit running on Juneteenth in the Bay Area? Transit services will continue without interruption. BART and Caltrain both confirmed that they will operate on normal weekday schedules. Are stores and grocery chains open on Juneteenth? Most retail outlets and grocery chains will be open during regular business hours. Target, Costco, Trader Joe's, Walmart and Safeway will all remain open. CVS will be operating, although some pharmacies may reduce their hours. Walgreens will keep stores open, but most pharmacies will be closed, except for 24-hour locations. Major retail chains such as Macy's, Best Buy, Home Depot and Lowe's also plan to operate as usual. Local businesses and restaurants are likely to remain open, though hours may vary. Customers are advised to call ahead or check websites. Will schools be closed on Juneteenth? Most public schools are closed for summer break. Where schools remain in session, public institutions will generally observe the federal holiday. Policies may vary for private schools and universities. Are national parks open on Juneteenth 2025? In honor of Juneteenth, the National Park Service will waive entrance fees to all national parks. Visitors can enjoy complimentary access to over 400 national park sites across the country, including Bay Area favorites like Muir Woods and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. When did Juneteenth become a federal holiday? Juneteenth, long commemorated by Black communities, was made a federal holiday in 2021 amid a renewed focus on racial justice. It has been described as America's second Independence Day. Despite growing recognition, not all states provide a paid day off for government workers. According to a 2023 Pew Research report, 28 states and Washington, D.C., recognize Juneteenth as a public holiday.
USA Today
14 hours ago
- General
- USA Today
'This is American history:' See photos around the US as the nation celebrates Juneteenth
'This is American history:' See photos around the US as the nation celebrates Juneteenth It's the day the promise of freedom finally rang true for more Americans: Juneteenth was celebrated with joy and resolve throughout the United States in 2025. Show Caption Hide Caption Black coastal town celebrate history while fighting to preserve it Officials in Eagle Harbor, a Black coastal town in Maryland, reflects on its rich history and legacy ahead of Juneteenth. Across the United States on Thursday, June 19, Americans celebrated the federal holiday commemorating the day the last group of enslaved African Americans were informed they were free. The day, dubbed Juneteenth, reflects on a moment when the promise of freedom first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence became a reality for more of its citizens. In 2021, then-President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act. It officially named the holiday that has been long celebrated by Black people and beyond with dancing, parades, ceremonies and historical reenactments. The holiday marks the date in 1865 – more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation – that Major General Gordon Granger and 2,000 Union Army troops came to Galveston Bay, Texas, to proclaim freedom for more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state. This year's celebrations took place across the country, with the lessons of history as important as ever. 'This is American history': From Galveston to Concord, 5 communities keep Juneteenth stories alive Juneteenth in Illinois The city of Peoria, in Central Illinois, celebrated the day with a parade, poetry and a picnic. An area festival also featured food, musical performances, a bake-off and more. More than 1,000 miles north east, in Worchester, Massachusetts, the YWCA hosted Juneteenth celebrations with a flag raising ceremony and a vow to keep tradition and the history alive, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported. "We are not here to celebrate," said Sha-Asia Medina, a volunteer with the area's Black Heritage Committee. "This is something to acknowledge and honor our ancestors, but the attack on our history and culture continues. This Juneteenth is important, especially given the time that we're in." Here are other photos of Americans celebrating the relatively new holiday across the United States in cities including Atlanta, New York and Savannah.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
How cities are scaling back Juneteenth celebrations after Trump-era DEI rollbacks
Despite Juneteenth's status as a federal holiday, celebrations across the country are being scaled back or canceled. Organizers say safety issues along with mounting resistance to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are making it harder to hold events – raising concerns that political backlash is threatening the commemoration of Black freedom at a time when experts say it is most needed. 'What we're seeing – businesses pulling back and universities canceling programs in response to attacks on DEI – shows that many institutions and corporations were never truly committed to diversity and inclusion,' said LaTasha Levy, a professor of Afro-American Studies at Howard University, a historically Black university in Washington, DC. 'We're not even being honest about what DEI really stands for.' Juneteenth is the oldest regular US celebration of the end of slavery. It commemorates June 19, 1865 – the day that Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and told a group of slaves that the Civil War had ended and they were free - more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. President Donald Trump tried to take credit for making Juneteenth 'very famous,' saying during his first term in 2020 that, 'nobody had ever heard of it.' His comments came while the nation was reeling from ongoing civil unrest after George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. But Juneteenth didn't become an official holiday until 2021, under President Joe Biden's administration – the first holiday to be approved since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983. Experts say this happened in part due to a racial reckoning - with the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Floyd in the same year as the global Covid-19 pandemic. Since his reelection, Trump has made the elimination of DEI programs a centerpiece of his administration, cracking down on diversity efforts in the federal government with a series of executive orders. In January, the Defense Department's intelligence agency paused observances of cultural or historical annual events – like Juneteenth – in response to Trump's ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal workplace, the Associated Press reported. In a statement to CNN earlier this month, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the agency is 'proud of our warriors and their history,' but will focus 'on the character of their service instead of their immutable characteristics.' 'Our unity and purpose are instrumental to meeting the Department's warfighting mission. Efforts to divide the force – to put one group ahead of another – erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution,' Parnell added. The impacts of the federal rollback of DEI practices have begun to trickle down to local communities. Several areas across the country have canceled or scaled back celebrations for the holiday, citing safety concerns, mixed feedback from the community and other issues. Reggie Johnson, president of the NAACP Metuchen Edison Piscataway Area Branch in New Jersey, said he had to move his organization's annual Juneteenth celebration to a smaller location after staff at the federal site where it was previously held expressed uncertainty about hosting it. 'The contractors misinterpreted our event as a DEI initiative,' Johnson said. 'They didn't want to risk having it and losing it because of Trump's interpretation of Juneteenth.' Five days later, Johnson said, federal staff called back to say the event would be allowed. But by then, he had already secured another space. A museum in Fredericksburg, Virginia, had to scale back its Juneteenth celebration because it could no longer access its National Endowment for the Arts funding. 'Our Juneteenth Grant was officially retracted on April 29th-well after planning begun for this year's festivities,' the president and CEO of the Fredericksburg Area Museum, Sam McKelvey, told CNN in an emailed statement this week. 'We are still holding a much smaller event with the museum in the red but the community has stepped up for us and allowed us to make it still happen.' While eliminating a federal holiday would require an act of Congress, experts warn that any dilution of the holiday celebration is cause for concern. 'Most Americans don't have a kind of deep knowledge of Juneteenth, but even that, what they know, will disappear,' Robert Bland, assistant professor of history and Africana studies at the University of Tennessee, said. Blythewood, South Carolina, Mayor Sloan J. Griffin III was elected in 2023 to a town of about 4,772 people – being only the second Black person to do so. This year, he was the only member of the town council to vote in favor of holding Juneteenth and Fourth of July events. In May, the town's Facebook page said the cancelations were 'due to safety concerns,' something that the mayor attributed to unprecedented population growth. Blythewood recently had two incidents where teenagers were involved in fights, which led to an event being canceled. Griffin also noted that there was a recent shooting around 2 a.m., involving minors who were out after prom. Still, Griffin said he knows how important the celebration of Juneteenth is and added that with his background in public safety he's used to coming up with multiple solutions to tackle a problem. South Carolina is a state with a complex history when it comes to race. It's home to Charleston, one of the nation's top travel destinations, but also a city plagued by its sordid past built on the unpaid labor of African men and women who were kidnapped, beaten, raped and enslaved. The state was the site of one of the nation's most racially motivated attacks in recent history and was among the last to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a paid holiday. 'I was the one that really started the Juneteenth piece here,' the mayor said, noting he was a council member at the time and supported commemorating the holiday. 'When we talk about Juneteenth in the history of the heritage, it is important that we never we never forget the past … but we also embrace the future and regenerate that burning desire that our parents and grandparents had in the 60s, to change things.' A former 2nd Ward alderman for the city of Plano, Illinois – the first city in the state to adopt Juneteenth as a holiday – agrees. 'I really think that it's an opportunity for us to tell our story, without being interrupted,' Jamal Williams said. 'We are now in 2025 and we're still talking about first, the first African American to do this … You know, we've been free for a long time.' Williams says he was the first Black member of the city's council. His last day serving as an alderman was last month. For years, he's helped organize Juneteenth events in the Plano community, including one in 2022 that drew about 1,100 people. That number dropped to less than half – roughly 500 people – in 2024, according to Williams. This year the former alderman decided not to hold an event in Plano after a lack of sponsors looking to participate – though he is supporting an event in nearby Yorkville, a few miles away. 'I got labeled as someone that only wanted to support the Black community, not necessarily the people in Ward 2, which I was elected to do,' Williams said. Another Juneteenth-related event across state lines was also canceled, as Indy Juneteenth in Indianapolis announced it would pause its parade but still hold several events to observe the holiday. The event's executive director said he tried to explore other options to keep the parade going. 'We were ultimately denied by public safety officials due to reported concerns from nearby residents, despite similar events taking place in that area in the past,' Executive Director James Webb told CNN. An organization that typically hosts a Juneteenth event at a local park in Bend, Oregon, said it was postponing this year's celebration – citing growing racial tensions and threats. And in Denver, the annual Juneteenth Music Festival was scaled back to a single-day event after several major sponsors either pulled out or reduced their contributions this year. Norman Harris, the festival's lead organizer, said the loss of support was abrupt and came without a clear explanation. Educators caution against conflating DEI with historical remembrances of holidays like Juneteenth. 'DEI efforts and historical remembrance celebrations are two totally different things,' inclusive leadership educator and scholar Toby S. Jenkins said. 'Fourth of July is not DEI, even though it celebrates freedom from political oppression. Memorial Day isn't DEI, even though it honors a protected population, our veterans.' Still, some say the scaling back and cancelations of these events paints a picture of how much work still needs to be done. 'I think it really affirms what we've already known. There are too many entities in our country who are not serious about freedom and liberation,' Levy said. 'I would really just hope that Black people, wherever they are, use it as an opportunity to connect, to build, to plan, for our future like we've always had to do, and to return to those traditions and strategies and wisdom of our ancestors of what to do in these moments of repression and hate,' Levy added. CNN's Nicquel Terry Ellis and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn contributed to this report.
Yahoo
a day ago
- General
- Yahoo
Should You Expect USPS Mail Delivery on Juneteenth?
Should You Expect USPS Mail Delivery on Juneteenth? originally appeared on Parade. The newest federal holiday—established by President Joe Biden in 2021—is Juneteenth, a holiday to commemorate the official widespread end to slavery in the United States. As Smithsonian Magazine reported, Juneteenth is known as the United States' Second Independence Day and falls on June 19 every year. But even though this is a federal holiday, is the post office is open on Juneteenth?Even though Juneteenth was only recently made an official federal holiday, this day has been around for a long time. And it all started because on June 19, 1865, U.S. General Gordon Granger announced to enslaved people in Galveston, TX that they were officially free. The Union Army finally started enforcing the end of slavery at this time, even though President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation into law back on Jan. 1, 1863. This two-year holdup was because slave owners didn't want to let go of enslaved people and simply didn't share the news with them; news was not as widely spread and accessible back then as it is now. Also known as 'Freedom Day' and 'Emancipation Day,' Juneteenth is a day to celebrate this major turning point in our nation's history. So, before you go expecting a special mail delivery on June 19, 2025, does USPS deliver mail on Juneteenth? And does this holiday impact UPS and FedEx deliveries? Is the post office closed or open? Read on to find As the official USPS site states, Juneteenth is one of their 2025 holidays. And as USA Today reported, that means that no regular residential or business mail delivery service will be available on June 19, 2025. They did note, though, that Priority Mail Express is available even on federal holidays, 365 days a year. Due to the fact that all USPS services will be closed on Juneteenth, the post office will also be closed on June 19, 2025. Related: As for non-federally funded mail and package delivery companies, FedEx and UPS operate a bit differently. While they might be closed for other holidays, they don't follow the federal holiday calendar. According to UPS's site, UPS pickup and delivery services will be available on June 19, 2025, and UPS stores will remain open per usual. As FedEx's site reported, they are the same. All FedEx locations will be open and they'll deliver packages as usual. Related: Because USPS coincides with all federal holidays, that means they run on a bank holiday schedule. This also means that on most major holidays and long weekends, USPS mail won't be delivered, and the post office will be closed. The USPS's list of remaining holidays on which they're closed is: Independence Day, July 4, 2025 Labor Day, Sept. 1, 2025 Indigenous Peoples' Day/Columbus Day, Oct. 13, 2025 Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2025 Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 27, 2025 Christmas Day, Dec. 25, 2025 New Year's Day, Jan. 1, 2026 Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Jan. 19, 2026 President's Day, Feb. 16, 2026 Memorial Day, May 25, 2026 Juneteenth National Independence Day, June 19, 2026 Independence Day, July 4, 2026 Labor Day, Sept. 7, 2026 Indigenous Peoples' Day/Columbus Day, Oct. 12, 2026 Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2026 Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 26, 2026 Christmas Day, Dec. 25, 2026 Up Next:Should You Expect USPS Mail Delivery on Juneteenth? first appeared on Parade on Jun 18, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 18, 2025, where it first appeared.
Chicago Tribune
a day ago
- General
- Chicago Tribune
David Wright Faladé: Black Texans were not ignorant of their freedom before June 19, 1865
At the end of the Civil War, Union Army Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to establish a base of operations for his occupying troops, and soon after, he read General Order No. 3 at a public meeting, proclaiming all enslaved people to be free. African Americans in the crowd responded with cheers and rejoicing. In the reporting at the time and in common retellings since, the event, known as Juneteenth, has been described as the day in 1865 the enslaved people of Texas finally 'learned' that they were free. Public figures and news outlets, then and now, have characterized it this way. I want to quibble with this depiction, as it suggests that enslaved Texans had been ignorant of the fact of their own freedom. This strikes me as improbable — impossible, even. By Southern law, enslaved people were property, like a plow horse or a prized settee, bought and sold or passed down from one family member to another. But they always knew themselves to be fully human, and they were everywhere present in the lives of those who owned them. They served drinks as their masters discussed the issues of the day with visiting guests and stood at hand during meals, overhearing conversations. They knew what their owners knew, oftentimes without the owners realizing. And they shared the information among each other — in the slave quarters and in those of nearby plantations, and also beyond, as enslaved people worked on docks and at rail depots. This became apparent during the war, when runaways fleeing into Union lines became sources of valuable intelligence to the invading army. So, the enslaved people of Texas had surely followed the progress of the war elsewhere in the South, including the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, just as their owners did, and very likely just as quickly. The problem was that, acting on this knowledge was exceedingly difficult. As Union victories mounted in the east, die-hard secessionists fled to Texas, the westernmost state in the Confederacy, far from the fighting, with as many as 150,000 enslaved people in tow. Slavery continued fairly uninterrupted there throughout the entirety of the war, and even after. Violence was the means by which slaveholders were able to get fellow human beings to submit to servitude, and Texans were willing to use it liberally. The arrival of the Union Army in the summer of 1865 did little to change this. The first sentences of Granger's order, which proclaimed that 'all slaves are free' and that future engagement between 'former masters and slaves' should be as 'employer and hired labor,' are often cited when telling the story of Juneteenth. But later ones bear closer scrutiny, particularly given the blatant racism suggested in them. General Order No. 3 goes on: 'The freed are advised to remain at their present homes, and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.' Granger's evocation of a potential 'idleness' on the part of the formerly enslaved and his command to restrict their freedom of movement illustrate a widely held ambivalence toward Black freedom at the time, by Northern white people as much as Southern ones. His order was not the panacea that we, today, might construe it to have been. African Americans, who for some time had likely known themselves to be legally free, were hardly free, in point of fact. To the contrary, in order to prevent the feared chaos that too much disruption of the status quo might incite, General Order No. 3 insisted on restricting their movement and on maintaining a historically fraught overseer-laborer relationship between white and Black. And though Granger declared that wages should be paid, his soldiers provided little enforcement. Despite the constraints, though, Black Texans attempted to claim their freedom. In an example from T.J. Stiles' book 'Custer's Trials,' in which he describes George Armstrong Custer's experience as part of Granger's occupying army, Stiles recounts a story from October 1865, more than three months into the Union presence. A 9-year-old Black girl quit the plantation on which she had been kept in bondage before emancipation and made her way 23 miles to Hempstead, northwest of Houston, to rejoin her mother, from whom she had been separated during slavery. Upon learning of the girl's departure, the wife of the plantation's owner dispatched their teen son to bring her back. The boy tracked the girl down, at her mother's side, and when she refused to return with him, he 'tied her hands behind her and then tied a rope around her waist, pulled her out, and tied her to a ring in his saddle, mounted and put spurs to the horse,' according to a Union Army surgeon. The surgeon reported that, by the time they arrived, the girl was just 'a mass of broken flesh and bones.' The boy was arrested, but Custer, the officer in charge, chose not to prosecute and sent him home. Persisting subjugation was a real and present threat for the formerly enslaved, even after Juneteenth. Black people knew they were free. They were struggling to find a way to actually live freely — to enjoy the promise of America that they and their forbears had toiled to help construct. How we understand the legacy of Juneteenth reflects how we understand the indispensable, foundational role of African Americans in American history. Black folks were not passive players in the drama of slavery and freedom. They militated as best they could, against extraordinary odds and even greater resistance. To characterize Juneteenth as the moment African Americans only first 'learned' of their emancipation risks perpetuating the false idea, broadly believed during slavery and recently resuscitated through efforts to ban books and scrub curricula, that they were merely victims, benighted and lesser, incapable of significant action for themselves.
