In keeping with Governor Northam’s declaration designating Juneteenth as a state holiday, the City of Falls Church announced Thursday that it will also observe the holiday.

City government administrative offices will be closed tomorrow, June 19. Employees who staff essential programs and services will work as scheduled.

Juneteenth marks the ending of slavery in the United States.

On June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger and his soldiers reached Galveston, Texas with news of the end of the Civil War.

Those who remained enslaved were set free.

The news came two months after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses Grant, officially ending the Civil War — and more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.