On Friday, April 2, the Senate Ways and Means committee convened for an executive session to vote on several bills--among them, was house bill 1016, which aims to make June 19, also known as Juneteenth--a state legal holiday. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas learned that the civil war ended and the emancipation proclamation was signed--despite it happening two years earlier in 1863.