This Friday is Juneteenth —a day that Black Americans have been celebrating for more than a century, but that only became a federal holiday a few years ago. The day has often been overlooked in American history books, and many people likely didn’t study the event it commemorates in school. So what is Juneteenth , and how did it become a federal holiday? What is Juneteenth? President Abraham Lincoln took a historic step toward abolishing slavery in the midst of the Civil War with the signing of