I promise it was no hyperbole when I said to Dr. Opal Lee, in the presence of her granddaughter Dione Sims: “I hope it doesn’t make you blush when we rightfully call you a living, breathing national treasure.” Roughly 12 hours later, I would be on stage with Sims and Lee in front of a packed house at St. Francis Auditorium in Santa Fe, thanking the Grandmother of Juneteenth for her undaunted quest to save the soul of America. No hyperbole. No cap.
If you’ve never heard of Lee, here’s the least you need to know: In 2016, at 89 years of age, she set out on a plan to walk 1,400 miles from Fort Worth, Texas — roughly four hours from Galveston, Texas, (significant for reasons I will share in a bit) to Washington, D.C., in order to convince Congress to make Juneteenth the 11th national holiday. Ever heard the term “voting with your feet?” Well, this was lobbying by foot. In fact, it was quite the feat (sorry, I couldn’t resist). With an initial goal of securing 100,000 petition signatures along her journey to our nation’s capital, she collected 1.5 million signatures in support of a national observance of Juneteenth.
So what’s Juneteenth, you ask? It is soon to be a 4-year-old national holiday thanks to the 117th Congress, President Joe Biden and Lee. Unironically, the last holiday to achieve federal observance status prior to Juneteenth was Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983 (courtesy of the 98th Congress and President Ronald Reagan). But why though? Well, consistent with this same spirit of emancipatory chivalry, by the time Union Major Gen. Gordon Granger and his escort rolled into Galveston to compel adherence to General Order No. 3 on June 19th, 1865 — it was more than two-and-a-half years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. General Order No. 3 was a “courtesy” reminder to Texas that all slaves were to be freed — like yesterday.
At least Granger’s cavalry strode in on horseback, presumably. Lee on the other hand — never one to send a man to do a woman’s job — took her campaign for the emancipation of America’s soul to Washington, D.C., on foot. During my time with her — at the dinner the night before our event and during — she shared the story about how the trek to D.C. was supposed to be accompanied by a climate controlled RV that was being donated to “the cause.” It would have been a comfortable place for a then-89-year-old to stay overnight after a day of walking and collecting signatures. However, the donor ultimately decided that Lee was “too political” for their generosity. That proved no more than a speed bump to the determined efforts of Lee and her team at Unity Unlimited. Inc.
On June 19, 1939, when Opal Lee was a mere 12 years old, a mob of angry white rioters showed up at her parents’ home on the southside of Fort Worth, Texas. The Lee family became an instantly known entity upon moving into the predominantly white neighborhood a few years earlier. I’m sure the annual Juneteenth gatherings at the Lee home did not go unnoticed among the neighbors, so the neighbors organized a little gathering of their own. The house was burned to the point where it was uninhabitable. According to Lee in the Fort Worth Star Telegram, “It was Juneteenth, which is a day in Texas which we knew we were all free. It had significance that people were storming and burning our place down.”
Now, at 97 years of age, Lee is being re-gifted the land upon which her family’s terrorized home once stood. Trinity Habitat for Humanity recently acquired the land and constructed a new home on the land that it awarded to Lee last week. We call that karmic reparations. Not only does she have a national holiday to her credit, she was also shortlisted as a finalist for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. Coincidentally, the namesake for the tenth federally recognized holiday was also a finalist for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. won the prize that year. Apparently, King — like Lee — was also well known for his marches.
I’ve gone on record in the past referring to MLK Day as America’s lone “holiday honoring the patron saint of Black America.” After spending 12 hours in the physical presence of Lee, I am obliged to revise the hyperbolical nature of that statement. There’s a new saint in town, sans canonization. A new holiday amongst the sacrosanct 11, which now make two national holidays that command recognition and observance of what has been called our country’s “original sin.” And in that regard, I humbly submit Lee as a fast-track candidate for living sainthood. I’m aware that there are some standard criteria out there, but sometimes the situation demands an exception. She checks a number of sainthood boxes already. Belief in God? Check. She told me she is a deaconess in her church. Verifiable miracle? Raise your hand if you ever thought you’d see the day that America made a holiday out of its mistakes. And if that’s not enough of a miracle, at 97, she still walks 2.5 miles every Juneteenth to commemorate how long it took slaves in Galveston to get word that they were officially free. And now it is a national holiday where we don’t have to go to work.
You’re welcome, America.
Author’s Note: I’d like to express extreme gratitude to Empower! Black Futures Community Fund who hosted Dr. Lee’s first ever visit to New Mexico and, of course, Dr. Opal Lee and Dione Sims for their fearless advocacy and time.