Opal Lee, the "grandmother of Juneteenth," tells her story to middle-school students at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, May 20, 2024. (Jennessa Davey/Stars and Stripes)
YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — More than 200 students and teachers at Yokosuka Middle School began their Monday morning with a presentation from a lifelong activist often called the “grandmother of Juneteenth.”
Opal Lee, 97, took the stage in the school cafeteria to discuss her decades-long mission to have Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, made a federal holiday.
She was joined on the stage with her granddaughter, Dione Sims, another Fort Worth-based activist and founder of Unity Unlimited, a non-profit that provides resources to promote unity and harmony in communities.
While President Abraham Lincoln formally freed slaves with 1863’s Emancipation Proclamation, enforcement of the executive order was not immediate, especially in Texas, the westernmost Confederate state.
On June 19, 1865, about 2,000 Union troops rode into Galveston, Texas, and announced the executive order, effectively freeing 250,000 slaves in the state. Juneteenth — a portmanteau of June and 19 — celebrates the occasion.
“Juneteenth is not a Texas thing; it’s not a Black thing,” Lee told the students. “We’re talking about freedom for everyone.”
Lee, originally from Marshall, Texas, spent her early life as a teacher and community advocate for Juneteenth celebrations. In 2016, she began drawing attention to the 2 ½ years between the Emancipation Proclamation and freedom for slaves in Texas by taking symbolic 2 ½-mile walks.
The civil rights campaigner shares a personal connection to the holiday she helped create. Her family home in Fort Worth, Texas, was burned on June 19, 1939, by a mob angry that a Black family had moved into a predominantly white neighborhood.
Opal Lee, the "grandmother of Juneteenth," wears her Presidential Medal of Freedom during a visit to Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, May 20, 2024. (Jennessa Davey/Stars and Stripes)
Opal Lee, the "grandmother of Juneteenth," tells her story to middle-school students at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, May 20, 2024. (Jennessa Davey/Stars and Stripes)
Opal Lee, the "grandmother of Juneteenth," wears her Presidential Medal of Freedom during a visit to Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, May 20, 2024. (Jennessa Davey/Stars and Stripes)
In June 2021, President Joe Biden officially made Juneteenth a federal holiday, with Lee in attendance at the White House ceremony. It became the first new federal holiday since former President Ronald Reagan signed a bill for Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983.
Earlier this month, Biden presented Lee with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor.
“I was delighted to get the medal, but it’s not just me — many other people were involved — and I think the medal ought to go around,” she told reporters after speaking with the middle-schoolers.
“I’m wanting people to realize that we’re not all free, due to homelessness, joblessness for people, health care, climate change — all these things need to be addressed,” she added. “I’m going to keep on walking and talking.”
Sixth-grader Camaya Infante, of Bremerton, Wash., said she’d never met anyone like Lee.
“Something that impacted me was that on July 4, the land was free, but Juneteenth was when the people were free,” she told Stars and Stripes after the event.
Infante’s classmate Brenique Pringle, 11, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., described the presentation as engaging.
“Something that I took home from it was that [Juneteenth] is not just about Black people or Americans being free,” she said. “I’ll always remember seeing Ms. Opal.”
Lee’s visit to Yokosuka, sponsored by the USO, included a brunch at the Chief Petty Officers Club and a meet-and-greet with base residents at the Fleet Theater. She is expected to participate in a fireside chat at U.S. Embassy Tokyo on Tuesday.
Legacy Foundation Japan, an outreach organization that focuses on Black and other minority communities in Japan, is working with Lee to organize a 2 ½ mile walk near Tokyo’s Imperial Palace on June 19 in recognition of the holiday.
