FORTitude had the honor of hosting the great Opal Lee! The Fort Worth and Civil Rights icon talks to Brinton and JW about growing up in Fort Worth, becoming a teacher and advocate for the community, and ultimately becoming the “Grandmother of Juneteenth.”
Opal Lee is a retired teacher, counselor, and American activist in the movement to make Juneteenth a federally recognized holiday. Lee campaigned for decades to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. She has promoted the idea by leading 21/2 miles walks each year, representing the 21/2 years it took for news of the Emancipation Proclamation to reach Texas. At the age of 89, she conducted a symbolic walk from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., leaving in September 2016 and arriving in Washington in January 2017.
On June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed Senate Bill S. 475 making Juneteenth the 11th federal holiday.
Lee was born in Marshall, Texas on Oct. 7, 1926. She was the oldest of three children of Mattie (Broadous) and Otis Flake. When she was 10 years old, she and her family moved to Fort Worth. In June 1939, her parents bought a house in the 900 block of East Annie Street, then a mostly white area. On June 19, 1939, 500 white rioters vandalized and burned down her home. Lee was 12 at the time.
Recalling it years later, she says: "The fact that it happened on the 19th day of June has spurred me to make people understand that Juneteenth is not just a festival."