Juneteenth is a federal holiday to celebrate the end of slavery in the U.S.
It became a national holiday last year, but state and local governments vary on how they want to recognize it. At the Black History Museum in Boise, officials want people to remember the relationship between the early days of statehood and the progress that's been made in the community.
"We had black coming here in the late 1890's, it was (an) entirely different playground than the rest of the United States or one of seven states that never had the lynching of a Black person," said Phillip Thompson, executive director of the Black History Museum. "We integrated schools 83 years before the federal government did so I'm not saying it was a racial utopia, but if you you look at in comparison to any other place in America at that time, we don't get credit for it, but we were oddly ahead of the curve."
Juneteenth commemorates the days, more than two months after the end of the civil war, when enslaved black americans in texas were informed of their freedom for the first time.
"Do whatever it is you do well and make it better for everyone as opposed to dictating or wagging your finger, 'OK, that's not done properly,' we got to actually do our part to work collectively to keep this little utopia we got going on here," Thompson said.
