Opal Lee, the campaigner widely known as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth”, celebrated her 100th birthday in Fort Worth, Texas, as construction began on a museum dedicated to the history of the US holiday.
Lee marked the milestone on Wednesday, October 7, with a ceremony called “Clearing the Way” at the future site of the National Juneteenth Museum in the city’s Historic Southside. The event saw the Southside Community Center cleared to make room for the planned 50,000 sq ft facility.
The celebrations continued in the evening at the Fort Worth Convention Centre, where former first lady Michelle Obama joined Lee for a special edition of the museum’s Uniting Voices speaker series.
The occasion honoured Lee’s decades of campaigning while looking ahead to the museum’s role in preserving the history of Juneteenth and educating future generations.
Opal Lee’s campaign for Juneteenth
Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that enslaved people in the state were free, more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
Lee was born in Marshall, Texas, on October 7, 1926, and became a teacher, school counsellor and community activist in Fort Worth. Her commitment to Juneteenth was shaped by a traumatic experience during her childhood.
When Lee was 12, a white mob drove her family from the home they had recently bought in Fort Worth. Newspaper reports said about 500 people gathered outside, smashed windows and dragged furniture into the street.
In 2016, aged 89, Lee began a campaign for Juneteenth to become a federal holiday. She organised a symbolic 1,400-mile walk from Texas to Washington DC, completing the journey in 2.5-mile sections to represent the two and a half years it took for news of emancipation to reach Texas.
She also helped gather 1.6 million petition signatures in support of federal recognition. Her campaign succeeded in 2021, when President Joe Biden signed legislation establishing Juneteenth as a national holiday, with Lee standing nearby.
Lee later received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2024. Members of Congress also nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her work.
A museum for the future
Wednesday’s ceremony marked the beginning of construction on the National Juneteenth Museum, a project closely associated with Lee’s legacy.
The museum’s chief executive, Jarred Howard, said the decision to begin work on Lee’s birthday reflected the importance of her contribution to the project and to the wider movement for Juneteenth recognition.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced a $3 million donation towards construction and the creation of a genealogy centre within the museum.
Fort Worth has pledged up to $15 million towards the facility, which is expected to include exhibition space and programmes focused on history, education, workforce development and entrepreneurship.
At the birthday ceremony, Lee said she was grateful for the support, adding: “I’m so happy I could do a holy dance, and these old legs won’t respond.”
Her activism has also included helping to establish a community garden in Fort Worth and supporting efforts to transform a former Ku Klux Klan auditorium into a museum and arts centre.
Speaking about the continuing importance of Juneteenth, Lee said in 2021: “We don’t want people to think that Juneteenth is a stopping point, because it isn’t. It’s a beginning.”
