NBA gave employees paid time off for Juneteenth for the first time in league history

Per The Undefeated, The NBA has given employees paid time off for Juneteenth for the first time in league history, The Undefeated has learned.

According to a league source, the NBA’s hope on the June 19 holiday is to give employees a chance to reflect on black history and the current state of race in the country.

Juneteenth (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, and Liberation Day) is a Texas state holiday celebrated annually on the 19th of June throughout the United States to commemorate Union army general Gordon Granger announcing federal orders in the city of Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, proclaiming that all slaves in Texas were now free. Although the Emancipation Proclamation had formally freed them almost two and a half years earlier and the American Civil War had largely ended with the defeat of the Confederate States in April, Texas was the most remote of the slave states, with a low presence of Union troops, so enforcement of the proclamation had been slow and inconsisten