Alabama lawmakers are again considering creating a permanent state holiday on Juneteenth to celebrate the end of slavery in America.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Juandalynn Givan, D-Birmingham, said in past sessions, Alabama’s Republican lawmakers haven’t supported creating the holiday.

“(They are) attempting to do everything in their power to eradicate that Black people are a part of American history,” she said.

Since 2021, Alabama has celebrated Juneteenth on June 19 through a proclamation by Gov. Kay Ivey. Givan’s bill this session, HB4, would make the holiday permanent, meaning Ivey would not have to issue a proclamation each year.

In 2021, the federal government made Juneteenth a national holiday in commemoration of the day in 1865 that the last slaves were set free in Galveston, Texas, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln and a few months after the passage of the 13th Amendment ending slavery.

Juneteenth is also known as Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, Jubilee Day and Black Independence Day in the United States. The first efforts to make Juneteenth a federal holiday began in 1994, according to the Congressional Research Service.

By 2023, 28 states had recognized Juneteenth as a state holiday, according to the Pew Research Center.

For several years, Gov. Ivey has issued proclamations each year naming Juneteenth a state holiday. In 2023, bills to make Juneteenth a permanent holiday and to end the celebration of Jefferson Davis’s birthday and Confederate Memorial Day and to shift or move Robert E. Lee Day, which shares the same date as Martin Luther King Jr. Day, all failed in the state legislature.

Political Science Professor Pia Knigge from Auburn University at Montgomery said the last time a bill to turn Juneteenth into a state holiday was considered, in 2023, some lawmakers said they were opposed to adding more paid state holidays. To address that, she suggested dropping a confederate holiday to make room for Juneteenth.

“This state gives a lot of weight, or symbolically pays a lot of attention, to the Confederacy,” she said, adding that hurts Alabama’s image nationally.

Alabama and Mississippi are the only two states that continue to combine Robert E. Lee Day with Martin Luther King Day as a holiday. A separate bill, SB85, filed this session would move Robert E. Lee Day to October.

Givan said if state lawmakers reject making a permanent Juneteenth holiday again, it will send the message that the wrongs of the past don’t matter.

“They don’t want those stories ever told,” she said.