These are the 14 House Republicans who voted against Juneteenth

While the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in support of declaring 19 June, or “Juneteenth,” a national holiday, several members of the Republican party decided to oppose it.

The “Juneteenth National Independence Day Act” passed in the House with 415 votes in favour and 14 votes against — all from Republicans. The next day the Senate unanimously passed the measure and President Biden signed it into law on Thursday afternoon.

The bill recognises as a national public holiday 19 June 1865, the day enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned that the Civil War had ended and that they were free from slavery. Over 250,000 people in the state of Texas finally got their freedom, two and a half years after president Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had freed all enslaved African Americans in rebel states. Texas recognised Juneteenth as a holiday in 1980, and was the first state to do so.