“The history of Juneteenth celebrations has its ups and downs,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said in a statement commemorating the day in June when Texas slaves learned that the Civil War was over.

The holiday, which is obviously anything but apolitical, has presented both challenges and compromises as it has gained legitimacy.

In January, a Virginia state legislator, 81-year-old Frank D. Hargrove, sponsored a resolution recognizing Juneteenth after opposing legislation that offered an official apology for slavery. In 2007, Hargrove said in an interview that no one living was responsible for slavery and that “our black citizens should get over it.”

Earlier this month, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) introduced H.R. 1237, a 38-word bill that’s co-sponsored by 70 other members of the House and seeks to recognize “the historical significance of Juneteenth Independence Day” and express “the sense of the House of Representatives that history should be regarded as a means for understanding the past and more effectively facing the challenges of the future.”

Davis introduced the same bill in 2007 and in 2001. Former Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) introduced a similar resolution in 1997.

More than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and two months after the South lost, Texas finally got the message that slavery was no more on June 19, 1865. That’s the day Union Army Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston with the news.

And in the years since, Juneteenth has been a sometimes contentious and other times celebrated holiday.

“Through some of the years and the celebration, there was shame,” said Jackson Lee. “It represented the fact that areas were enslaved two extra years.”

So for some, Juneteenth is less a celebration of Southwestern slaves’ independence than it is salt poured on a centuries-old wound. During the civil rights movement, some student activists wore Juneteenth freedom buttons. The black power movement of the late 1960s also helped resurrect the day as something of a new Fourth of July, naming it Juneteenth and celebrating with parades, barbecues, fireworks, speeches and even readings of the Emancipation Proclamation.

“[Juneteenth] has been turned upside down by joy, jubilation and pride,” continued Jackson Lee. “It symbolizes now the tenacity, the determination to be free.”

On Jan. 1, 1980 (117 years after the Emancipation Proclamation), Juneteenth became an official state holiday in Texas, the first government-sponsored celebration of emancipation in the United States. Jackson Lee said Houston plans a weeklong celebration that will end this coming Saturday. Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) will give the opening remarks at the Juneteenth Multicultural Health Fair in Houston and will attend a parade.

Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas) encouraged not just Texans but all “Americans to use this holiday as an opportunity to recognize the tremendous progress our country has made in the civil rights arena while also renewing their commitment to future efforts to ensure equality in America.”

Jackson Lee echoed those sentiments and viewed the holiday through a more modern lens.

“It is a special year for speaking of freedom as we look towards the opportunity of the ascending son of such history,” she said, referring the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who has sponsored Juneteenth recognition in the Senate. “It’s not isolating,” continued Jackson Lee. “It is education.”