In keeping with Governor Northam’s declaration designating Juneteenth as a state holiday, the City of Falls Church will also observe the holiday. City of Falls Church Government administrative offices will be closed. Employees who staff essential programs and services will work as scheduled.

Juneteenth marks the ending of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger and his soldiers reached Galveston, Texas with news of the end of the Civil War. Those who remained enslaved were set free. The news came two months after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses Grant, officially ending the Civil War — and more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.