Beyoncé and Solange 'always' celebrate Juneteenth, Tina Knowles-Lawson says

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Beyoncé and Solange 'always' celebrate Juneteenth, Tina Knowles-Lawson says
Beyoncé alongside her sister Solange and mother Tina Knowles-Lawson.George Pimentel/WireImage via Getty Images
  • Beyoncé, Solange, and Tina Knowles-Lawson "always have and always will" celebrate Juneteenth.
  • "Everyone needs to know the truth," Knowles-Lawson spoke of the annual holiday.
  • President Joe Biden is set to sign a bill Thursday, making Juneteenth a federal holiday.
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Beyoncé and Solange apparently "always have and always will" celebrate Juneteenth.

In a Wednesday interview with CBS This Morning, the mother of the sister singers, Tina Knowles-Lawson, opened up about what the annual holiday means to her and her family.

"When I was a child, ever since I could remember, we always celebrated Juneteenth. It was a day that you went to the beach," she recalled about celebrating in Galveston, Texas.

Knowles-Lawson's hometown of Galveston is the historic landmark where on June 19, 1865, more than 250,000 of the last remaining enslaved Black people were informed by Union army soldiers that the Emancipation Proclamation, which granted enslaved people their freedom, had been signed by then-president Abraham Lincoln two years earlier.

It's why many Black communities commemorate Juneteenth as their independence day, as it was the true end to slavery in the United States.

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"When I got older, I was able to go to Houston to Emancipation Park, and they have big beautiful parades there," the 67-year-old, added. "We've always celebrated; it's always been a very important holiday."

Knowles-Lawson, who is currently partnering with Facebook to educate others about the holiday, also reflected on the beauty of being Black and how she taught her daughters about Black pride and art.

"I absolutely always knew that it was an honor to be a Black person. This is what my parents taught me. We should have pride and just feel very honored by that," she said.

"And so I was careful to impart that message to my children as well to surround them with African American art and images that they didn't obviously see on TV or around as much as they should have."

"That's up to us parents to impart that knowledge to our children and pass it on," she concluded. "My kids celebrate the 19th of June. They always have and they always will. It's very important."

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Juneteenth is not yet a federal holiday, but soon will be. President Joe Biden is signing a bill Thursday, making it official, according to The Washington Post.

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