Opal Lee, a lifelong Juneteenth activist, was invited to the White House when President Biden signed the bill making Juneteenth a national holiday. She reflects on decades of advocacy that finally brought the celebration to national recognition.
Chapters
This is the pen that President Biden used to sign Juneteenth into law. I'm Opal Lee, and I've had this marvelous day at the White House. The young people would say, "It's off the chain." I knew I was coming because Juneteenth had been made a national holiday, and the president was signing the bill into law. And I was invited to the signing of that bill.
Looking out across this room, I see the advocates, the activists, the leaders who have been calling for this day for so long, including the one and only Miss Opal Lee.
Over the course of decades, she's made it her mission to see that this day came. She's walked for miles and miles, literally and figuratively, to bring attention to Juneteenth, to make this day possible.
You cannot imagine how joyful, how humble, how magnificent the whole thing has been. There may be some of you who don't know what Juneteenth is. The enslaved in Texas weren't told they were free for 2 and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed them. They'd watch in their churches and they'd pray for freedom to come, and it finally did when General Gordon Granger and 7,000 colored troops from New Jersey and New York made their way to Galveston, Texas, and he read General Order Number 3 that said, "All slaves are free." When those people came in from their labor and somebody read that to them, we started celebrating, and we've been celebrating ever since. Juneteenth is not a Texas thing. It's not a Black thing. We're talking about freedom for everyone.
