This year marks the fourth year that New Jersey will celebrate Juneteenth as an official state holiday. However, while Juneteenth technically combines the words June and nineteenth, the state of New Jersey will be celebrating the holiday on Friday, the 20th.

"Modern descriptions of American slavery often paint the North as slavery-free, abolitionist states, but this isn’t true."

Celebrations around the U.S. are marking Thursday as Juneteenth, the anniversary of the day in 1865 when Union soldiers brought the news of freedom to enslaved Black people in Texas. An organization that promotes African American history and culture in New Hampshire got an early start commemorating the holiday,