Opal Lee - Infinite Women

Born: 1926, United States
Died: NA
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Opal Flake

The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.

In 2021, Juneteenth was officially recognized as a federal holiday in the United States thanks in large part to the then-94-year-old Opal Lee. The 1863 Emancipation Proclamation officially declared enslaved people free, but this only applied to states that had seceded from the Union, not the northern slave states where President Abraham Lincoln actually had authority at the time to enforce such a command but didn’t want to alienate those states and risk them seceding as well. Due to the ongoing Civil War, which lasted until April 1865, and then the time it took to fully inform enslaved people in all states, June 19th—shortened to Juneteenth—1865 has long been recognized among African American communities as the real date of emancipation, though the 13th Amendment would not take effect until that December.
“Have you ever had a gut feeling about something? I felt, positively, like I hadn’t done enough with my life,” Lee said in 2022. “Even into my 80s, I had a nagging feeling that I should be doing more.”
And so in 2016, she decided to march from Forth Worth, Texas to Washington D.C. to raise awareness about Juneteenth—although she didn’t walk the entire way, she did make it to the Capitol. In 2019, she started a petition that gained 1.5 million signatures in support of making Juneteenth an official holiday. Her efforts paid off when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law on June 17, 2021, making it the 12th legal federal holiday, and the first new one since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was signed into law in 1983 as a direct result of Coretta Scott King’s efforts. Lee observed in 2022,
Older people don’t always remember this, but we have power. We have so much to teach the younger generations. I know some people are afraid. They don’t want to be bothered, or they draw into themselves. But the future depends on us. We can’t be satisfied with just having Juneteenth made into law. We’ve got joblessness, homelessness, health care, climate change. If we don’t address these things, nobody’s going to. We have to educate, because the books don’t always tell the truth. I’ve seen pictures in textbooks of Black folks picking cotton, and they almost looked like they were enjoying themselves. I picked cotton, and ain’t nothing enjoyable about it. You have to stand up and say, “These things cannot happen anymore.”
Lately, you hear talk about our differences, but under our skin we are the same. We bleed red blood, all of us. Freedom isn’t something just for Black people to celebrate. It’s for everybody. I’d like to see our country celebrate freedom from Juneteenth to the Fourth of July. Now that would be a celebration! If each one of us could convince one person who’s not on the same page, we could do it. It’s not gonna happen in a day or a week. We have to work on it. Slowly. Persistently. That’s how change happens.