She is known by many different titles.
Grandmother of Juneteenth. Inspiration. Icon.
But to David Ford, Opal Lee is a lifelong friend.
Ford was one of hundreds of people who spent their Juneteenth morning rolling, strolling and pushing strollers for Opal’s Walk for Freedom in Fort Worth.
For the first time since the holiday’s federal recognition in 2021, Lee wasn’t present at the celebration due to health complications that resulted in hospitalization.
Ford, 80, grew up across the street from Lee in Fort Worth’s Historic Southside during the 1950s and 1960s, and credits her with practically raising him, he said.
“She was very kind, but stern,” he said with a grin. “She wouldn’t let me get into any trouble.”
In 2016, when Lee, now a 98-year-old retired school teacher, started her activism, Ford had no doubts she’d accomplish what she set out to do: convince Congress to make Juneteenth a national holiday recognizing the 1865 emancipation of slaves in Texas.
The day became a federal holiday June 17, 2021, with Lee in attendance as President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth bill into law. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Biden in May 2024.
The annual 2½-mile Walk for Freedom around Farrington Field recognizes the two-and-a-half years it took for the news and enforcement of freedom to reach the enslaved people in Texas in 1865.
Where else can I celebrate Juneteenth?
Other Juneteenth celebrations around Fort Worth over the weekend include concerts at Bass Performance Hall, a block party in Historic Southside and a Sunday Gospel Experience at the Potter’s House of Fort Worth.
Ford, a retired business professor, and his wife, Jackie, showed up to walk for Lee, they said.
While Juneteenth is the newest federally recognized holiday, many members of the Black community, especially in Texas, have celebrated it for over a century.
For Ford, Juneteenth has always meant filling a nearby park with friends and family, and packing the holiday with food, music and a celebration late into the night.
“People think this is something new, but it’s really not,” Jackie Ford said.
Fort Worth resident Angela Hodges similarly grew up with Juneteenth park celebrations in the 1980s and 1990s. She showed up to the June 19 walk with her daughter to continue “being big” on the holiday, as her own mother did when Hodges was a child.
Hodges sees it as fitting that the day’s nominal grandmother is a Fort Worth native. The day shows Texas’ focus and leadership in emancipation and “claiming freedom for all Americans,” she said.
“On that day, technically, that’s when all Americans had their freedom from various types of oppression,” Hodges, a pharmacist, said. “At least on paper.”
Clint Dupew showed up with his two children for the morning walk, celebrating the day and what it means to have “freedom for everybody,” he said.
“(Juneteenth) crosses all the values that we want to live, and that I want to pass on to our kids,” Dupew said. “It’s looking toward the future by remembering the scars from our past. We’re not trying to whitewash anything and act like we’re just great, but we’re learning from our mistakes and moving forward and saying ‘hey, this has made us stronger and this is bringing us closer.’”
Dupew, who works as the executive director of the domestic relations office of Tarrant County, said even though Lee wasn’t physically present, her presence was tangible.
“Fort Worth has a lot of prominent people who have a lot of different voices, and I don’t know that we always let them shine,” he said. “We let politics get in the way, but this is a way to say, ‘Hey, look, we’re more than just a red party or a blue party. We’re a people. We’re together. We have a history.’”
Drew Shaw is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at drew.shaw@fortworthreport.org or @shawlings601.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.