OHIO — Most state offices will be closed Friday in observance of Juneteenth, Gov. Mike DeWine announced Thursday.
President Joe Biden signed legislation designating June 19 as a federal holiday. DeWine said the day is now automatically recognized as a paid state holiday as well.
“I also support legislation efforts to commemorate Juneteenth in the Ohio Revised Code,” DeWine said after Biden signed the legislation.
Since Juneteenth falls on a Saturday this year, many states, including Ohio, will observe it Friday.
Most of the state’s 50,500 employees will have the day off, many offices will be closed and most federal employees will also have the day off. The exceptions are hospital and public safety workers. The U.S. Postal Service said it will still deliver mail Friday and Saturday.
Juneteenth marks the day in 1865, two months after the end of the Civil War and more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, that enslaved Black people in Texas were told by Union soldiers that they had been freed.
It’s the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created in 1983. One of the federal holidays, Inauguration Day, happens every four years.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia L. Fudge, a former Cleveland-area representative, will be returning to the city Friday to comemmorate the day. She will serve as keynote speaker at a Black homeownership event hosted by the Black Homeownership Collaborative, which is holding an event at Cleveland State University from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
