Statham city employees will get an extra holiday in 2025 as the result of a Tuesday decision by the city council. In a 5-1 vote, council members added Juneteenth to the list of city employee holidays for the upcoming year.
Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, which came on June 19, 1865 as a Union officer ordered the enforcement of Emancipation Proclamation in Texas, a final frontier of the Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln, declared that enslaved people in the rebellious Confederate states would be free as of Jan. 1, 1863.
