Opal Lee - Fort Worth Inc.'s 2022 Person of the Year
Civil Rights and Fort Worth icon Opal Lee, whose tireless dedication to cause over a span of decades was finally rewarded with a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021, is Fort Worth Inc.’s Person of the Year.
Lee was front and center as President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act in the East Room of the White House in June.
Biden called the signing “one of the greatest honors I will have as president.”
Lee, who received a standing ovation from those in attendance, was presented the first pen used to sign the bill to acknowledge her leading role in the federal recognition of the day when the last enslaved African Americans were emancipated through General Order No. 3, one of the most important records for Black Americans in history.
Lee will be honored as Fort Worth Inc.’s second Person of the Year on May 19 at the Fort Worth Club as part of the magazine’s annual issue of “The 400: Fort Worth’s Most Influential People.” Fort Worth Inc. staff selected one person from among this year’s The 400 list to be our Person of the Year.
The criteria for Person of the Year: a lifetime of accomplishment, particularly in the last year, and for the good of Fort Worth and the region.
Last year, Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price, who elected not to seek an unprecedented sixth term as the city’s top elected official and is now a candidate for Tarrant County Judge, was the inaugural winner.
Lee made an impact as a change agent, making Fort Worth the base of progress across the country. And her status as a social justice engineer may very well go international.
Last month, U.S. Rep. Mark Veasey (D-Fort Worth) and 33 other members of Congress submitted a letter to the Nobel Prize committee to nominate Lee for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.
“Ms. Opal Lee is a civil rights icon who has worked tirelessly to ensure that the Juneteenth holiday gets the national recognition it has long deserved,” Veasey said in a statement released by his office at the time. “I have been proud to call Ms. Lee a friend and mentor for nearly my whole life and was honored to work alongside her to finally get Juneteenth made into a national holiday last year.
“I cannot think of a better person who has constantly fought for justice, and that is why I am nominating her to receive this year's Nobel Peace Prize.”
Lee, 95, is a native Texan born in Marshall and raised in Fort Worth. She has been inspired her entire life by tragedy: the vicious act of mob violence. At the age of 12, white supremacists burned down her family’s home in a predominantly white neighborhood. That experience compelled her to a life of teaching and activism.
Of the fire, she once said: “I guess I'm supposed to say it left scars, but the only thing I know is that I felt it shouldn't happen to other people. We should be in the business of helping people understand that our differences aren't all that great.”
Her objective to seeing that Juneteenth was a federal holiday, the educator said, was education, once saying that she wanted to make sure young people knew that the holiday — a Texas state holiday since 1980 — wasn’t merely about “soda water and barbeque.”
In June, when asked what she hoped the federal holiday would create beyond the recognition, Lee said: “If we would unify, if we would get together and do something about homelessness, and do something about people having decent housing, and decent food, and they would have not only a place to stay but a decent education. If we could just love one another, you know? If you could get past the color of my skin and love me like you do that boy next door to you.”
In 2016, at age 89, Lee walked from her home in Fort Worth to Washington, D.C. — 1,400 miles — in an effort to bring awareness to her movement for the cause of Juneteenth. She walked 21/2 miles each day to symbolize the two and half years that Black Texans were deprived knowledge of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the president’s executive order freely the slaves.
It was on June 19, 1865 that Union soldiers led by Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in the Galveston to deliver General Order No. 3, officially ending slavery in the state.
The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.
“We’re blessed to mark the day in the presence of Ms. Opal Lee,” Biden said in June at the bill signing ceremony. “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.”
Tickets will go on sale soon for the reception honoring Lee and The 400. Sign up to be notified when tickets are available here.
Please sign up for our bi-weekly Fort Worth Inc. newsletters for more information. In December, Lee joined the FORTitude podcast. Watch here.