‘It’s amazing’: Opal Lee, grandmother of Juneteenth, is getting a new home for only $10
Opal Lee, the 97-year-old “grandmother of Juneteenth,” is getting a new home on the exact spot where a racist white mob trashed her family’s house more than 80 years ago.
On Thursday morning, about 80 people gathered on East Annie Street in the Historic Southside neighborhood for a ceremony where the home will be built. Lee, whose relentless advocacy work was instrumental in getting Congress to make Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021, cut a 2-by-6 wood stud and helped raise a wall.
“I wanted to raise that thing by myself,” Lee said with a laugh.
The home is being funded by Texas Capital Bank, Trinity Habitat for Humanity and HistoryMaker Homes.
In 1939, when Lee was 12, her family moved into what was then a white neighborhood. Four days later — on Juneteenth — hundreds of rioters showed up. Police showed up but did not control the mob.
“My dad came from work and he had a gun,” Lee told the Star-Telegram in 2022. “Police told him, ‘If you bust a cap, we will let this mob have you.’ Our parents sent us to friends several blocks away, and they left on the cusp of darkness. Those people went ahead and pulled our furniture and burned it. They did despicable things.”
Her parents never discussed it afterwards, and Lee spent the rest of her life trying to forget the painful memory.
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Lee worked for years for national recognition of Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, which President Lincoln had signed more than two years earlier.
Juneteenth had long been commemorated in Texas — becoming a state holiday in 1980. In Fort Worth, more than 30,000 people celebrated Juneteenth in 1975 in Sycamore Park.
In 2016, Lee symbolically walked 1,400 miles from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., to bring attention to the importance of Juneteenth. She was in attendance in 2021 when President Joe Biden signed legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.
The Historic Southside neighborhood is also the future home of a National Juneteenth Museum.
Lee had kept hope that she would one day own the land where her childhood home once stood. In 2020, when she was a board member of Trinity Habitat for Humanity, she inquired about purchasing the lot from the organization. Gage Yager, chief executive of Trinity Habitat for Humanity, sold it to Lee for $10.
Texas Capital will provide funding for furnishings for the home, and HistoryMaker Homes will build it at no cost to Lee.
“Part of the beautiful story here is that there are a lot of different organizations that have wanted to have an impact in the community and not one of us could have done it on our own,” said Nelson Mitchell, CEO of HistoryMaker Homes. “And it shows the power of dealing with a common cause and wanting to have a positive impact in the community that really big and cool things can happen.”
Mitchell says the target move-in date for Lee is June 19.
Mayor Mattie Parker, who attended Thursday’s ceremony, said it was a time to celebrate what it really means to work with love, forgiveness and inspiration.
“If you’d heard her speak about her family’s story and the tragedies that she’s lived through and the racism that she’s faced in this city,” Parker said. “This is our chance to completely start over and give her the home that she so deserves to be proud of in her community.”
Lee wants to continue to spread the message that Juneteenth means unity and freedom for everyone. Until we address and take responsibility for the homeless crisis, unemployment, climate change and health in our communities, she said, everyone can’t be free.
“It’s amazing, when we were here, there were whites that didn’t want us here and now there are all nationalities in this neighborhood,” Lee said. “Times have changed, and I’m just so glad that I could be a part of that change.”
