Missouri state offices will be closed Friday in honor of Juneteenth, a new national holiday commemorating the end of slavery.
The Missouri Office of Administration announced the closures Thursday, after President Joe Biden signed a law declaring Juneteenth a federal holiday.
The new holiday commemorates July 19, 1865, when freed slaves in Galveston, Texas, learned the Civil War was over and they were free — two months after the Confederacy had surrendered.
It’s the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created in 1983.
