Crystal Wise/Fort Worth Inc.
Opal Lee
A group of rioters burned down the family home of Opal Lee when she was 12, but more than 80 years later the Civil Rights activist and “Grandmother of Juneteenth” will be returning there to live.
The property where her home sat on 940 E Annie St., was given to Lee as a gift on her 97th birthday from Trinity Habitat for Humanity, the organization that acquired the property. Lee was the guest of honor at a groundbreaking ceremony Saturday. The general contractor for this build is Trinity Habitat for Humanity, which is working alongside Citizens Concerned with Human Dignity who will serve as the organization funding the project.
“I tried for years to find out who owned the lot," Lee told CBS 11. “I found out that Habitat owned it. I offered to buy it, but they wouldn't sell it to me. They gave it to me.”
Lee, who is also one of Trinity Habitat’s founding board members, said she and her family only stayed in the home a few nights before rioters gathered to harass, vandalize, and burn down their home, which was located in Fort Worth's historic South Side.
“If they had given us an opportunity to stay there and be their neighbors, they would have found out we didn’t want any more than what they had — a decent place to stay, jobs that paid, [to be] able to go to school in the neighborhood, even if it was a segregated school,” Lee said. “We would have been good neighbors, but they didn’t give us an opportunity. And I felt like everyone needs an opportunity.”
Lee, best known as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth,” successfully lobbied U.S. Congressional leaders to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. Nearly five years after she made her historic walk to Washington, D.C., President Joe Biden signed the legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday on June 17, 2021.
“We’re blessed to mark the day in the presence of Ms. Opal Lee,” Biden said that day. “You’re incredible. A daughter of Texas. You are an incredible woman, you really are. Hate never stopped her. Over the course of decades, she has made it her mission to see that this day came.”
Later the same year, a Congressional delegation, led by Fort Worth Democrat Marc Veasey, recognized Lee for a dedication to the cause of civil rights and racial equality by nominating her for the Nobel Peace Prize, the ultimate recognition from the international community.
Lee was Fort Worth Inc.’s 2022 Person of the Year, an honor bestowed on an individual who has demonstrated a significant contribution to making Greater Fort Worth a better place to live and work with emphasis placed on their contributions over the past year.
Juneteenth marks the ending of slavery in the United States. Union soldiers, led by Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, in June 1865 with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. The event was 2 ½ years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
Juneteenth became a state holiday in 1980.
In 1976, Millard and Linda Fuller founded Habitat for Humanity, an organization that has helped renovate, repair, and improve more than 800,000 quality, affordable homes. Since then, it has served more than four million people worldwide. Habitat for Humanity works alongside volunteers and partner families to build homes and strengthen communities.
“Trinity Habitat for Humanity is profoundly grateful to the countless individuals and organizations that have contributed to Opal Lee's reclaiming of her home,” the organization wrote in a statement. “We look forward to welcoming Opal Lee home as a community in honor of her 97th birthday.”