Boston-area businesses look to make Juneteenth a paid holiday

A small but growing number of Boston-area businesses are giving their employees time off for the upcoming Juneteenth holiday, part of the national reckoning that has followed the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota. Juneteenth, celebrated on June 19 each year — this upcoming Friday — commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S. It marks the date in 1865 that Union soldiers declared in Texas that slaves in the state were free, following the end of the Civil War. Few employers have traditionally…