The 94-Year-Old Who Made Juneteenth a National Holiday

Variety: “Each year on June 19, Opal Lee makes a two-and-a-half-mile pilgrimage to commemorate the date in 1865, two and a half years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, when more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in Texas learned that they were finally free, marking the true end of slavery in America.”

“For more than 40 years, she had carried on the tradition, working with the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation and leading local Juneteenth events. But (in 2016) she was particularly inspired, coming up with a plan to walk the 1,400 miles from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., to petition the Obama administration and Congress to grant the holiday an official position on the calendar.”

Said Lee: “I just remember thinking, ‘Gee, I’m 89 years old and I think that there’s lots more that needs to be done.’”