For the first time this year, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Foundation Board of Trustees voted to make Juneteenth an official holy day of remembrance during its November 2020 meeting. They issued the following statement:

“The Presbyterian Foundation is giving sustained, intentional focus on our strategic priority of diversity, equity, and inclusion in who we are as a Board and as a staff, cultivating a culture of education of, conscientization in, and proficiency in dynamics of historical, institutional, and systemic racism,” says Rev. Dr. Neal Presa, Chair of the Presbyterian Foundation Board of Trustees. “Juneteenth is a sacred day of reckoning for the Church, and we dare say, for our nation, as it brings to attention the delay of more than two and a half years for official word to reach enslaved Blacks in Texas that the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued years prior. The tragedy of that gap in time — of justice delayed was justice denied — calls forth our collective wills that we as Christians and as a people can never rest until the fulness of racial equality and racial equity is realized.”