Montclair Will Celebrate Juneteenth As Public Holiday

MONTCLAIR, NJ — There’s a new public holiday in Montclair: Juneteenth.

On Thursday, Mayor Sean Spiller and the township council announced that Montclair will observe Friday, June 18 as a public holiday in recognition of Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.

Municipal offices will be closed and refuse and recycling collection will be suspended, officials said.

Juneteenth is now also a state holiday. In September 2020, Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation that designates the third Friday in June as a state and public holiday.

According to a joint statement from Spiller and the town council:

“African Americans have celebrated Juneteenth since the latter part of the nineteenth century. The holiday commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas to inform enslaved people of the Emancipation Proclamation and their freedom. This important moment in history took place two months after the Civil War ended, and more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.”

“Juneteenth is not only a celebration of this momentous period in our history, but also a day that affords us an opportunity to consider how much more needs to be done to ensure true equity and justice for all Americans,” Spiller said.

“The need to recognize the challenges we still face as a nation, to confront the systemic racism rooted in so many of our institutions, and to truly live up to the ideals prescribed in the founding documents of this great nation is a call to action that each of us, as Americans, need to answer,” Spiller said.

Last year, the holiday was put in the public spotlight as people around the nation – including Essex County – demanded social change and police reform in the wake of George Floyd's death.

• See related article: Essex County Fights For Better Future, Racial Justice On Juneteenth
• See related article: What Is Juneteenth? (5 Things To Know About The Holiday)

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