{"id":460387,"date":"2026-10-08T19:10:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T19:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/460387\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T19:10:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T19:10:15","slug":"opal-lee-celebrates-100th-birthday-at-two-fort-worth-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/460387\/","title":{"rendered":"Opal Lee celebrates 100th birthday at two Fort Worth events"},"content":{"rendered":"

Opal Lee, the lifelong Texan and a driving force in making Juneteenth a federal holiday, spent her 100th birthday on Wednesday, October 7, at the center of celebrations in her hometown that included a visit from former first lady Michelle Obama<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lee attended the groundbreaking for a Fort Worth a museum dedicated to telling the history of Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S, and was later joined at an evening event headlined by Obama. The planned 50,000-square-foot National Juneteenth Museum<\/a>, located in a historically Black neighborhood, is projected to open in 2029.<\/p>\n

Lee, widely known as the \u201cgrandmother of Juneteenth,\u201d wore a flower lei and was surrounded by family and friends while expressing happiness and gratitude after the announcement of a $3 million donation by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so happy I could do a holy dance, and these old legs won\u2019t respond, but let me tell you how thankful I am and that this deed won\u2019t go unnoticed,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n

When then-President Joe Biden in 2021 signed a bill into law making Juneteenth a federal holiday, Lee was by his side.<\/p>\n

The holiday marks the day in 1865 when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston at the end of the Civil War with an order declaring the freedom of the enslaved people in Texas. It was about 2 1\/2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed the enslaved people in the still rebellious states of the Confederacy. Six months later, the ratification of the 13th Amendment permanently ended slavery in the United States.<\/p>\n

Lee has been a force in Fort Worth, where she worked for decades as a teacher, counselor, and community activist.<\/p>\n

She has said she has cherished childhood memories of celebrating Juneteenth with food, music, and games, and as an adult, she was involved in planning the celebration in Fort Worth.<\/p>\n

\u201cLong before there were historic walks, cameras, books, and well-deserved national acclaim, my childhood memories are filled with you making sure that Fort Worth remembered,\u201d U.S. Magistrate Judge Renee H. Toliver said at the event.<\/p>\n

She told Lee that she remembered her planning community events, parades, and festivals.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou always reminded us that history is not something you leave behind, it\u2019s something you actively protect,\u201d Toliver said.<\/p>\n

The future site of the museum is not far from the home that was built for Lee<\/a> a couple of years ago on the same tree-lined corner lot that her family had been driven from by a racist mob when she was a young girl.<\/p>\n

Lee was 12 when, on Juneteenth in 1939, a white mob of hundreds descended on her Black family\u2019s home, days after they moved into a white neighborhood. The mob smashed windows and furniture, according to newspaper reports from the time.<\/p>\n

Jarred Howard, the museum\u2019s CEO, was among those who honored Lee on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was important for us to do this on this date because everything we\u2019ve done for the last several years, everything we continue to do, is built around the spirit of the venerable Miss Opal Lee,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Opal Lee, the lifelong Texan and a driving force in making Juneteenth a federal holiday, spent her 100th…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[6980,116,118,117,7218,64676,37628],"class_list":["post-460387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-celebrities","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-juneteenth","tag-michelle-obama","tag-opal-lee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}