(NewsNation) — This week’s Juneteenth holiday commemorates the end of slavery in the United States in 1865, but this Wednesday also marks 60 years since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved by the U.S. Senate. The occasion serves as a reminder that many of the rights afforded to Black Americans were not realized when the last slaves were freed, and that the struggle for complete freedom of all citizens is ongoing.
“Yes, we’ve achieved the freedom of the enslaved people,” U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, told NewsNation. “But there is still the freedom of opportunity, the freedom (for all) to thrive economically, the freedom for people to love who they love, and the freedom for women to make their own health care decisions.”
He added: “This is all the underlying issue of freedom and the freedom of people to pursue their lives unobstructed.”
What is Juneteenth?
Juneteenth has been recognized as a federal holiday since 2021, when President Joe Biden officially added the first national holiday since Martin Luther King. Jr. Day became a national holiday in 1983.
Biden signed the measure into law after the U.S. Senate passed the bill unanimously; it had previously passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a 415-14 vote.
Also known as “Freedom Day” or “Emancipation Day,” Juneteenth commemorates the day that Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, a U.S. Army officer and Union general during the Civil War, formally announced the end of slavery in Texas on June 19, 1865.
“This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor,” Granger said that day.
The order was announced in Galveston, Texas, the last of the U.S. states to receive word that all slaves were freed, which came more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
Granger’s proclamation came more than two months after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia, bringing the major conflicts of the Civil War to a close.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
Originally conceptualized by President John F. Kennedy, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law July 2, 1964, by President Lyndon Johnson. The act prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin.
With 67 votes needed to pass, the measure went through several versions with opposition coming not from Republicans, but from conservative Democrats. Debate over the bill continued for months as Democratic leader Mike Mansfield faced division within his own party. After rounds of back and forth, the proposed bill reached a head June 10, 1964. With Democrats facing a looming deadline, Republican Sen. Robert C. Byrd took the floor on the evening of June 9 and spent the next 14 hours and 13 minutes dissecting the bill, according to the Senate record.
Finally, just after 10 a.m. June 10, Byrd finished his lengthy presentation, which led to a vote. The passage ended a filbuster of 60 working days that included seven Saturdays.
Despite the push for an end to discrimination and segregation beginning sooner, Kennedy’s assassination slowed the process. However, in the wake of Kennedy’s death, Johnson picked up the pursuit of legislation that outlawed segregation in public places such as lunch counters, restaurants, theaters and hotels.
It also ended segregation in public schools, libraries and swimming pools, and made discriminatory employment practices illegal for the first time.
Author Jonathan Eig, the author of “King: A Life,” told NewsNation that Johnson found himself with more political capital as the new president in the wake of Kennedy’s death as the nation grieved.
Johnson worked with civil rights leaders including King and grassroots activists who kept the pressure on for civil rights legislation to be signed into law. The bill remained filibustered for 60 days as continuous debate among lawmakers, led mainly by Southern Democrats, delayed the act’s passage.
“The biggest force was the moral one, actually — that the nation needed to embrace a more democratic future,” Eig said. “Of course, there was politics involved but there was finally a sense that this is what democracies do. They expand rights, they expand freedom, and eventually, that was going to have to win the day.”
Today’s push for equal rights
While Juneteenth’s status as a federal holiday marked an important milestone, the occasion — like the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 — continues to face challenges, Horsford says.
Although progress has been made, especially in the way of voter rights, Horsford said challenges remain, including in several Southern states where many Black Americans face what he called oppressive and suppressive voting laws.
Vice President Kamala Harris has called for Wednesday to be a day of action surrounding voter rights to ensure that every American is registered and has equal access to the ballot box ahead of the November general election that could be partly divided along racial lines.
The election comes as the Congressional Black Caucus is working with the Biden administration and other groups to close that gap at a time when the average white family has a per-capita wealth of about $280,000 compared to a per-capita wealth of about $44,000 for the average Black family.
Those inequities, along with similar struggles with housing, entrepreneurship as well as investment and savings opportunities, have an impact on the everyday lives of many Black Americans, he said.
In its State of Black America Report for 2024, the National Urban League maintains that while this year marks the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, the journey for racial justice is nowhere near complete.
“No issue in history has met with more resistance in the United States Congress than civil rights,” Marc Morial, the organization’s president and CEO, wrote in the report.
Those injustices need to be discussed regularly, Horsford said, because they represent the feelings of those being most affected. But while Juneteenth commemorates the ending of slavery, June also recognizes Pride Month for the LGBTQ+ communities and approaches the anniversary of the overturning of Roe vs. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Horsford said the struggles for many Americans among racial and gender lines continue as “forces” exist that are attempting to take the country back to where it was before the passage of the Civil Rights Act and are attempting to erode the fundamental rights of so many Americans. This week, he said, creates an opportunity to recognize how much work remains.
However, Eig, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, says that the continued struggles should not diminish the work that the Civil Rights Act accomplished.
“The fact it hasn’t solved all of our problems is a reflection on us, not the law,” Eig said. “We’re still fighting over racism and racism is a persistent, underlying problem in our society and segregation remains in many aspects. …The struggle continues, but that doesn’t mean the law didn’t have a huge impact.”