A 97-year-old Texas woman known for her pivotal role in making Juneteenth a federal holiday has been given back the land in Fort Worth, where her family home was destroyed by a racist mob in 1939.
Opal Lee, who became known as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth” after she walked 1,400 miles from her Texas home to Washington, D.C., in 2016 to advocate for Juneteenth, was 12 years old when a horde of racist whites forced her family to flee their newly built home 84 years ago.
The violent mob, armed with baseball bats, ransacked the home, smashed all the windows, broke up the furniture, and set fire to the family’s clothes and valuables.
Local law enforcement connived in allowing the mob to attack the family the day after they moved in, marking a dark and indelible chapter in Lee’s early life that continues to inspire her efforts to raise awareness about the true meaning of Juneteenth.
“The fact that it happened on the 19th day of June has spurred me to make people understand that Juneteenth is not just a festival,” she told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2021.
More than eight decades after the crushing loss, Trinity Habitat for Humanity is constructing a brand-new home for Lee on the very land where her family’s livelihood was reduced to rubble many decades earlier.
Her new home is expected to be completed in the coming months.
Gage Yager, CEO of Trinity Habitat for Humanity, an affiliate of the national nonprofit, said Lee called him recently to ask about buying her family’s land back.
“She’s like, ‘You guys own my lot at 940 East Annie,’” Yager recalled, according to ABC affiliate WFAA in Dallas-Fort Worth. “She told me briefly: ‘I used to live on that lot and people chased us out and burned the house down. I would love to buy the lot from you.’ I said: ‘Well, Opal, we won’t sell it to you. We’ll give it to you.’”
Yager and Lee had known each other for some time as both serve as members…
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