The Gillette Stadium offices will be closed on Friday as the Patriots commemorate Juneteenth.
A holiday that’s growing in the national eye, June 19, 1865 was the day slaves in Texas were freed on federal orders read in Galveston. Though the emancipation proclamation had technically freed them two years earlier, Texas was so far south that enforcement was spotty until the Civil War ended. It was on June 19 that the Union troops finally landed there.
Many other teams across the NFL are celebrating the day, and the league office in New York will be closed, too.