June 19, 2025 – Sacramento, California – Governor Gavin Newsom today issued a proclamation declaring “Juneteenth National Freedom Day: A Day of Observance” in the State of California.
The text of the proclamation can be found below:
July 4 is not the only day America celebrates its independence. Each year on June 19, we look back to this day in 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger led troops into Galveston, Texas, to announce the end of the Civil War and the insidious institution of slavery. Thousands of enslaved people in Texas, among the last to learn of their independence, were finally freed, more than two years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
Over the next several decades, Black Americans who journeyed out of the South in search of better lives brought Juneteenth celebrations with them. The thousands who settled in California, especially in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, taught our state that America’s struggle for freedom did not end in 1776 or 1865, but continues to this day…