Spartanburg County Council voted unanimously to recognize Juneteenth as an official county holiday, a change that will close county buildings on June 19 while keeping emergency services like 911 operations running. The county estimates the new paid holiday will cost roughly $200,000, and the vote caps a six-year campaign led by one council member who says the fight was personal.
District 1 representative Monier Abusaft has pushed for formal county recognition of Juneteenth for about six years, according to WYFF. Abusaft founded Juneteenth Inc. in Spartanburg in 2016, and he told the station that his fellow council members were finally willing to join him in formally recognizing the holiday. He said Spartanburg County has been the biggest sponsor of any Juneteenth celebration in the city, a distinction he credited to years of community organizing alongside the political push.
What the Holiday Means for County Operations
Under the new policy, Spartanburg County buildings will be closed on Juneteenth, but the holiday excludes emergency services such as 911 operations, which will continue running as usual, per the same report. The county's roughly $200,000 cost estimate reflects the price of adding a new paid day off for its workforce, though the underlying budget breakdown was not detailed publicly. Abusaft framed the vote as more than a scheduling change, saying the ending of slavery represents the fulfillment of the American dream.
He also connected the holiday to the nation's founding ideals, saying the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence were made whole by what happened on June 19, 1865. That date marks when Union troops in Galveston Bay announced that enslaved people in Texas were free, according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Juneteenth National Independence Day was signed into law as a federal holiday on June 17, 2021, per the National Park Service.
How Other South Carolina Governments Have Handled It
Spartanburg is not the first South Carolina government to add the holiday. The Columbia City Council became the first in the state to give city employees a paid day off for Juneteenth back in August 2020, according to The State. That same account says Richland County Council added Juneteenth as a county holiday on October 4, 2022, though the South Carolina Association of Counties told The Post and Courier that Charleston was the only county it knew of at the time to have declared Juneteenth a holiday — an apparent discrepancy the available records do not resolve.
Charleston County Council itself voted unanimously on Oct. 12 to recognize Juneteenth as a county holiday, making it the 14th paid holiday each year for county employees, the Post and Courier reported. That county estimated the move would cost about $100,000 in holiday pay for employees required to work through it — half of what Spartanburg County now projects for its own workforce.
A Broader Shift in Employer Recognition
The trend extends well beyond South Carolina's county governments. A Mercer study cited by The State found that 39% of employers had made Juneteenth a paid holiday in 2023, up from 33% in 2022 and just 9% in 2021. Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth a permanent state holiday back in 1980, decades before it reached federal recognition.
Elsewhere in the region, Buncombe County leaders in North Carolina proposed adding Juneteenth as a paid holiday for county employees, according to Mountain Xpress. If approved, Buncombe government workers would receive 13 paid holidays a year, while essential functions like emergency medical services and public safety would keep operating — a structure similar to the exemption Spartanburg County is now building in for 911 operations.
