Opal Lee alongside the official Juneteenth flag | Wikimedia Commons
Lee’s campaign was a result of decades of work around Juneteenth, which is the holiday that commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union Major Gen. 3, issued by Granger on June 19, 1865, as the document that was associated with Juneteenth’s origin. She started walking at 89 Lee began her national holiday campaign in 2016 at the age of 89, with her plan being to walk from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., and cover about 1,400 miles to bring the issue directly to communities and lawmakers along the route. Lee and her supporters traveled to cities that hosted Juneteenth events, and she walked 2.5 miles in each location. The distance was a representation of the roughly two and a half years between President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and Granger’s announcement in Texas in 1865. Lee described Juneteenth in broader terms when she spoke to PBS in 2023, and said that it was not limited to Texas or Black Americans but concerned freedom on a wider spectrum. Her 1,400-mile campaign did not create the federal holiday by itself, and the legislation required congressional action and years of organizing by many people and groups.
Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and announced that enslaved people in Texas were free. PBS reported that Lee’s campaign eventually drew people from across the country into the effort. The National Archives identifies General Order No. Lee worked with organizations with the aim of recognising Juneteenth, organized events and supported petitions that called for federal recognition. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture describes her as integral in the movement that resulted in Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday. The federal holiday had become part of the national calendar by then, while Lee remained involved in public events and discussions about its history. But Lee’s public campaign gave the push a highly visible face, and she was present when the law finally took effect. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
The Emancipation Proclamation had been issued more than two years earlier, but the news and enforcement of emancipation had not reached many enslaved Texans.
94-year-old retired Texas teacher Opal Lee stood beside President Joe Biden on June 17, 2021, as he signed the legislation that made Juneteenth a federal holiday. Lee had begun a campaign that took her more than 1,400 miles from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C. five years earlier, when she pushed lawmakers to recognize June 19 nationally. When she was 12, in 1939, her family’s Fort Worth home was burned by a white mob on Juneteenth. President Joe Biden embraces Opal Lee at the signing of the bill on June 17, 2021 | Wikimedia Commons Biden signed the bill in 2021 The federal campaign gained momentum over the years, especially as Juneteenth received greater national attention during the racial justice demonstrations of 2020. Congress passed legislation that established Juneteenth National Independence Day as a federal holiday in June 2021. Biden signed the bill on June 17, which made Juneteenth the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established in 1983. Lee attended the White House signing ceremony, and the National Archives records June 17, 2021, as the date the legislation was signed into law. Lee continued her annual 2.5-mile Juneteenth walks after the federal designation, which retained the same distance that had become connected with her campaign, while her advocacy became something bigger than the holiday itself.
The Smithsonian says the incident became part of the history behind Lee’s later advocacy. Lee grew up in Marshall, Texas, and later moved to Fort Worth. The house had been purchased by her father and was in a neighborhood where Black families had faced continuous hostility.
