More U.S. workers are getting Juneteenth o as awareness grows

NEW YORK (AP) — A unprecedented number of U.S. companies are giving employees off for Juneteenth on Friday, raising hopes that the day commemorating the end of slavery could someday become a true national celebration.

The momentum could hinge, however, on whether the country’s largest employer - the federal government - joins the trend. The date - June 19th - is not a federal holiday, and many non-black Americans have only recently become of aware of the day. More than 460 companies, including Nike, Twitter and Lyft, have committed to observing Juneteenth, with the majority o ering a paid day o , according to HellaCreative, a group of black creative professionals in the San Francisco Bay Area that launched an initiative to galvanize corporate support for making the day an official holiday. It’s a potential sea change, spreading awareness of the date beyond African Americans who have long celebrated it with cookouts, parades and community festivals.

“We’ve explained our lives away as black people. We’ve had to explain and define black history,” said Miles Dotson, co-Founder of HellaCreative. “Our hope is that we’ve said it enough times that folks outside of ourselves see that they are equally part of this picture.”

Juneteenth commemorates the day when the last enslaved African Americans learned they were free 155 year ago in Galveston, Texas, where Union soldiers brought them the news two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

This year, in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Juneteenth is expected to be a day of racial justice protests, a key driver behind companies deciding to mark the day. Other prominent corporations giving employees time off include Target, J.C. Penney, Best Buy, the NFL and J.P. Morgan Chase.

“As a black person, I have been ‘sat down’ by older relatives and told the stories of disenfranchisement, discrimination, and the multiple exclusions they faced,” said Phillip Thompson, a team leader at stock images provider Shutterstock, which declared Juneteenth a permanent company holiday.