 3 from the second story balcony of the home.The Emancipation Proclamation is also read and speeches are made.. Representative Al Edwards died of natural causes April 29, 2020 at the age of 83, but the annual prayer breakfast and commemorative celebration continued at Ashton Villa with the late legislator's son, Jason Edwards, speaking in his father’s place., 

In the late 1970s when the Texas Legislature declared Juneteenth a "holiday of significance [...] particularly to the blacks of Texas," it became the first state to establish Juneteenth as a state holiday.The bill passed through the Texas Legislature in 1979 and was officially made a state holiday on January 1, 1980.