Crystal Wise/Fort Worth Inc.
Opal Lee
Decorated Fort Worth civil rights champion Opal Lee received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House on Friday.
Lee, 97, was one of 19 recipients who received the honor, the highest distinction a U.S. civilian can receive. The Presidential Medal of Freedom was presented to those individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.
“These 19 Americans built teams, coalitions, movements, organizations, and businesses that shaped America for the better,” the White House said in a press release. “They are the pinnacle of leadership in their fields. They consistently demonstrated over their careers the power of community, hard work, and service.”
Other civil rights leaders included Clarence B. Jones, personal counsel and close friend of Martin Luther King Jr. who helped write King’s “I Have a Dream” speech; Medgar Evers, the NAACP’s first field officer in Mississippi who was assassinated in 1963; and U.S. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina.
Lee was the Fort Worth Inc. Person of the Year in 2022. In June of the year before, Lee personally witnessed President Joe Biden sign the bill making Juneteenth the 11th federal holiday. It was the realization of a dream Lee had worked so hard to see.
Juneteenth, celebrated every June 19, is the commemoration of the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Texas learned they were free through Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation 2 1/2 years earlier. Lee argued that Juneteenth is not simply a holiday for African Americans, but all those Americans who labored to abolish slavery and those in the white community who took up the struggle, at great personal risk, for equality in the Jim Crow 20th century.
Her work on behalf of Juneteenth garnered her the sobriquet “Grandmother of Juneteenth.”
Years earlier, Lee undertook her walk from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., to raise awareness of her campaign and gather signatures to take to the federal capital city. She eventually compiled three million signatures.
She was 89 at the time.
In 2022, a Congressional delegation led by U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Fort Worth) nominated Lee for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Lee is also an advocate for the homeless and affordable housing. Last year, officials joined Lee in breaking ground on The Opal, an affordable housing endeavor of the Fort Worth Housing Solutions in the 3300 block of Keller Haslet Road.
The tragedy and triumph of Lee begins with a white mob burning down her family’s home when she was 12 years old.
“I didn’t have time to be angry,” she says. “I finished high school at 16. My mom had wanted me to go back to Marshall [Texas, where the family was from] to go to school at Wiley College. I got married instead. My mother wouldn’t even go to the wedding. It took me four years and four babies to realize I was going to have to raise that husband, too. I cut my losses.”
She “worked I don’t know how many jobs to go to college. She had gone to Wiley without a dime. She worked in the college bookstore and her mother kept the job she had during the week in Fort Worth. Her mother worked Lee’s job in Fort Worth during the week, and Lee came home to work om the weekends.
She completed her degree in 3 ½ years.
Lee came back to Fort Worth and took a job teaching as well as another with Convair, the bomber plant in Fort Worth that would eventually become Lockheed Martin. She taught school all day and clocked in at the bomber plant at 4 p.m. and clocked out at midnight.
On Saturday, SMU will present Lee with an honorary degree, a Doctor of Humane Letters, her eighth, including one from TCU, Texas Wesleyan, and University of North Texas.
Lee was named Texan of the Year by the Dallas Morning News in 2021 and became the only the second African American to be honored with a painting in the Texas State Senate.
Other recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom included:
- Michael Bloomberg - a philanthropist and former mayor of New York City, who founded Bloomberg L.P.
- James Clyburn - a congressional representative from South Carolina and retired educator, who has been in Democratic leadership since 2003. He has represented southern and eastern South Carolina in Congress since 1993.
- Al Gore - a former Democratic presidential candidate and vice president under President Bill Clinton.
- John Kerry - a politician and diplomat, who served as secretary of state in President Barack Obama’s administration. He also served as a climate envoy for Biden.
- Nancy Pelosi - the first and only woman elected speaker of the House and current representative from California.
- Elizabeth Dole - a lawyer and politician, who served as a senator representing the state of North Carolina. She is also the wife of the late Kansas Sen. Bob Dole.
- Michelle Yeoh - an award-winning actress from Malaysia, who is best known for her roles in Everything Everywhere All at Once and Crazy Rich Asians.
- Jim Thorpe - an Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon and pentathlon in the 1912 Summer Olympics. He was the first Native American to win a gold medal.
- Judy Shepard - a mother and LGBTQ+ rights activist, who founded the Matthew Shepard Foundation after her gay son, who was beaten to death in Laramie, Wyoming.
- Frank Lautenberg - a former senator from New York and businessperson, who died in 2013.
- Gregory Boyle - a Jesuit Catholic priest who founded the world’s largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program—Homeboy Industries.
- Phil Donahue - a media personality who hosted the first TV talk show to feature audience participation.
- Katie Ledecky - an Olympian, and the most decorated female swimmer in history.
- Ellen Ochoa - a former astronaut and former director of the Johnson Space Center, who was the first Hispanic woman in space.
- Jane Rigby - an astrophysicist known for her work on the James Webb Space Telescope.
- Teresa Romero - the president of the United Farm Workers. She is the first Hispanic woman to lead the union.