SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (CBS) — For the very first time, the Juneteenth flag is flying over the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield.
The flag was raised early Saturday morning, and it will wave over the dome through the weekend.
Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, with the news that the Civil War had ended and slavery had been abolished, freeing the last of enslaved African Americans still being held in the Confederacy. It was more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
On Wednesday, Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law making Juneteenth an official state holiday in Illinois.