We are impressed by the scope of activities planned for Juneteenth and the great effort put forth by so many individuals and organizations to make a success of its first celebration as an official state holiday.

We also question why the Henrico County government is not following the state’s lead and recognizing Juneteenth as an official holiday. Government offices in the City of Richmond and Chesterfield County will be closed Friday, June 18, in observance of the holiday. So will schools, courts and other concerns.

We acknowledge that it has taken us a bit to warm up to a holiday that we mistakenly believed was apropos only to the experience of people in Texas. It was in Galveston, Texas, where, on June 19, 1865, Union troops led by Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived to announce that the Civil War had ended and that all of the enslaved people were free based on the terms of the Emancipation Proclamation issued two years earlier.

Virginians know that announcement in Texas came more than two months after Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, was liberated by Union forces on April 3, 1865, ushering in freedom for the enslaved in this area. Others became free elsewhere in Virginia after Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant received the official surrender of the main Confederate army from its commander, Gen. Robert E. Lee, at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.

Just days later on April 14, 1865, President Lincoln, who had issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, that freed all enslaved people held in most Confederate territories, including Texas, was shot by an assassin and died the next day.

But, according to historians, slaveholders in Texas wanted to make sure they had workers to bring in the harvest and didn’t spread the freedom news to the 250,000 people who were still held in slavery. Maj. Gen. Granger did it for them.

From then on, this day, June 19, was marked as Freedom Day, or Emancipation Day — not July 4th, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, but the day when all Americans finally were free.

Certainly, we are still fighting against the continued resistance to our liberation and equality in this nation. A holiday won’t change that. But Juneteenth reminds all Americans of the history of this nation and the meaning of freedom.

And in all its forms of celebration and expression, Juneteenth signals to people across America, including younger generations, that we remain dedicated to bringing about full recognition of the personhood, freedom and equality of African-Americans and other people of color no matter how many decades it takes.