Opal Lee, the Grandmother of Juneteenth, speaks to participants in front of African American Museum in Fair Park after they finished walking in 2024 Opal’s Walk for Freedom honoring the U.S. federal holiday, Juneteenth, Wednesday, June 19, 2024, in Dallas.
Chitose Suzuki/Staff Photographer
Opal Lee will celebrate her centennial birthday Wednesday, a milestone in a life that propelled her from a turbulent childhood in deeply segregated Texas to become a beloved civil rights leader.
Tributes and birthday wishes have for months poured in for Lee, known widely as the “grandmother of Juneteenth.”
Children at Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth made birthday cards for Lee. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African History and Culture in Washington, D.C., celebrated with children’s storytime and art.
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On Wednesday, Lee will celebrate with a pair of events in Fort Worth, where she has long lived. In the morning, the National Juneteenth Museum will host a celebration and clearing ceremony to mark the beginning of the museum’s construction. In the evening, former first lady Michelle Obama will join Lee for a private, ticketed event at the Fort Worth Convention Center for the museum’s United Voices Speaker Series.
“For 100 years, she has poured love, courage and conviction into our communities,” civil rights attorney Lee Merritt said in a tribute on social media.
Opal Lee, the Grandmother of Juneteenth, center, walks through Fair Park with her granddaughter Dione Sims, second from left and hundreds of participants during 2024 Opal’s Walk for Freedom honoring the U.S. federal holiday, Juneteenth, Wednesday, June 19, 2024, in Dallas.
Chitose Suzuki/Staff Photographer
Lee is known for an unbending optimism. She often tells crowds to turn themselves into a “committee of one,” and that love can be taught.
Ryon Price, pastor of Fort Worth’s Broadway Baptist, said Lee has “inspired us all over the years, never harboring enmity but summoning us all to the better angels of our nation.”
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“Over and over again, we have heard her say, ‘If people can be taught to hate, then they can be taught to love,'” he said. “I believe that. Dr. Lee helps me to believe it.”
Lee’s story is well known in Texas and beyond. She grew up celebrating Juneteenth by picnicking and dancing with her family at Sycamore Park in Fort Worth. In 1939, when she was 12, a mob of white supremacists set fire to her family’s home and destroyed it.
An Associated Press headline at the time read “Fort Worth crowd raids Negro home,” describing how a crowd of 500 hurled rocks at the house, then stormed inside and torched furniture.
That event helped steer Lee toward a career as an educator, and later, an activist. In 2016, at age 89, she made her way from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., to draw attention to Juneteenth, walking 2 ½ miles in several cities to represent the 2 ½ years it took for news of the Emancipation Proclamation to reach Galveston.
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In 2021, then-President Joe Biden, with Lee at his side, signed into law a bill declaring Juneteenth a national holiday.
Since then, Lee has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and has received more than a half dozen honorary doctorates. In 2023, Lee’s portrait was unveiled in the Texas Capitol, becoming only the second Black person to have a portrait hung in the Texas Senate chamber.
Earlier this year, Mattel released a Barbie doll in Lee’s likeness. Her granddaughter, Dione Sims, said Lee screamed in delight when she saw the doll for the first time.
Related: What to know about Opal Lee, ‘Grandmother of Juneteenth’ and local civil rights legend
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