What to Know About Opal Lee, the 'Grandmother of Juneteenth' Who Helped Make Holiday a Reality

When President Joe Biden officially made Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021, there was one person in the audience for whom the moment was the culmination of a lifelong effort: Opal Lee, or as some call her, the "Grandmother of Juneteenth."

Lee, who's from Fort Worth, Texas, sat in the front row as Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. She also received a standing ovation from the crowd at the behest of the president, who called her an "incredible woman."

"I've got so many different feelings all gurgling up in here," Lee, now 97, told CBS affiliate KTVT at the time. "I don't know what to call them all. I am so delighted to know that suddenly we've got a Juneteenth. It's not a Texas thing or a Black thing. It's an American thing."

The moment was a lifetime in the making for Lee, a dedicated activist who has spent decades working to get Juneteenth recognized as a national holiday.

The cause is exceptionally personal for Lee, whose home was set on fire by White rioters on Juneteenth in 1939.

"People gathered. The papers say that it was 500 strong, and that the police couldn't control them," she previously told Variety. "My dad came home with a gun, and the police told him if he busted a cap, they'd let that mob have him."

"If they had given us an opportunity to stay there and be their neighbors, they would have found out we didn't want any more than what they had — a decent place to stay, jobs that paid, [to be] able to go to school in the neighborhood, even if it was a segregated school," she continued. "We would have made good neighbors, but they didn't give us an opportunity. And I felt like everybody needs an opportunity."

As she explained to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the incident inspired her activism, pushing her to "make people understand that Juneteenth is not a festival."

"It should be a unifier," she told the newspaper. "The slaves didn't free themselves. It took all kinds of people — Quakers, abolitionists — to get the slaves free."

A retired educator, Lee makes a symbolic two-and-a-half mile walk each year on Juneteenth, a distance that honors the two-and-a-half years it took for news of freedom to reach all enslaved people in the United States.

In 2016, she trekked 1,400 miles to Washington, D.C. to plead her case for officially recognizing Juneteenth as a federal holiday before the Obama administration and Congress, stopping along the way to complete two-and-a-half mile walks in various cities, according to Variety.

In May of 2024, Lee received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Southern Methodist University — her eighth honorary doctorate. That same month, she was presented with a Presidential Medal of Freedom — the highest civilian honor — from President Biden, for her efforts in making Juneteenth a national holiday, CBS reported.

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According to ABC News, this Juneteenth, Lee was given a new home "built on the site of the childhood home that was reduced to ashes." The outlet reported that Lee had been trying to re-acquire the land "for years," ultimately discovering Habitat for Humanity owned it. The organization gave her the land — and the new home — for free.

In an interview about the gesture, Lee told ABC, “My mom would say, Baby Opal – that’s what she called me – it’s about time. It's about time."