The GrandMother of Juneteenth

June 19 has always been a significant day in Opal Lee’s life. Not only was it the day that news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached her home state of Texas in 1865, but it was also the day in 1939 that a white mob burned down her family’s home. She was 12 years old.

This experience led her to advocate for the designation of Juneteenth as a federal holiday. For years, she gathered people together for 2.5-mile walks, representing the two-and-a-half years it took for the 250,000 enslaved Black people in Texas to learn they were free after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. In 2019 she launched a petition hoping to gather 100,000 signatures—it garnered 1.6 million.

“I keep advocating that ‘Each one of us teach one of us,’ because we know people at work, at church, in our meetings, that aren’t on the same page, and we can change their minds. I mean, if people can be taught to hate, they can be taught to love.”