Stephen Montoya
Opal Lee leads Juneteenth's 2 1/2-mile walk.
You know that old saying, you really don’t know a person until you walk a mile in their shoes? That’s exactly what was on my mind as a throng of Juneteenth supporters gathered on the East Side of Fort Worth to usher in another year of celebration for this event — heat be damned.
This year’s event began at the Evans Avenue Plaza near the historic Terrell Heights neighborhood just east of Interstate 35W. After getting my press badge for this holiday event, I began to walk around looking for photo opportunities to convey the positive vibes that seemed to be everywhere. Attendees were laughing and dancing as a slew of live performers took turns serenading the crowd. It was around 10:30 a.m. that a large line began to form in support Opal Lee’s Walk for Freedom.
An artist's rendering of the National Juneteenth Museum.
Lee, 96, also known as the "Grandmother of Juneteenth," made history when she made the decision to walk from Fort Worth to Washington D.C. as a way to try and get Juneteenth recognized as a federal holiday. Her dedication paid off and nearly five years after she made that walk, President Joe Biden signed the legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday on June 17, 2021.
But this holiday is anything but new. Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. A group of Union soldiers, led by Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston in June of 1865 with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. This was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
Since then in Texas, African Americans and history fans alike have been commemorating, in one shape or form, this date. Juneteenth became a state holiday in 1980.
It’s now 11 a.m. as an entourage of several all-terrain vehicles slowly drive through the frenzied throng of attendees. Journalists clamor to capture an image of Lee as her ATV approaches. Lee is helped out by a group of attendees in yellow shirts who shield her from the media mass now closing in on her position. As she begins to take her first few steps, Lee is all smiles as she purposefully kicks of the beginning of a 2.5-mile trek, a number that represents the timeframe it took for the slaves in Texas to find out they were free after Lincoln's signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Anita Heiskell, co-director for the Miss Juneteenth Pageant says she is excited to participate in an event like this because it makes her feel in tune with history.
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“This kind of event shows where we have come from because you really don’t know where you are going until to know where you come from,” she says. “The fact that this is celebrated all over the United States and the world goes to show its significance.”
A reluctant star, Lee has taken on the persona of a celebrity. Since her historic walk in 2016, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, and this year was honored as the second Black woman to have her portrait hung in the Texas Senate chamber.
Stephen Montoya
Both of her alma maters, the University of North Texas and Wiley College, awarded her honorary doctorates, and a new affordable housing complex, The Opal, is being built in her honor in Fort Worth, as is the National Juneteenth Museum she’s long advocated for. Recently, the members of the National Juneteenth Museum board broke ground for their new complex, which is scheduled to open on June 19, 2025.
This new 50,000-square-foot facility will sit on land previously occupied by the old Juneteenth Museum, a one-story house that was lost to a fire in January, on the corner of East Rosedale Street and Evans Avenue, a few yards away from the starting point for today’s walk.
Taking a few steps in someone else’s shoes, it was as if the spirits of the past were walking with us, supporting us throughout our journey in the arduous heat. I tried to imagine how those slaves must have felt when they heard the news that they were indeed free. After walking several blocks, it wasn’t about my comfort anymore, my steps had more meaning, and my heart was full. It may have been my first Juneteenth celebration, but it will most certainly not be my last.