Before she would be known as the “grandmother of Juneteenth,” the day meant something different to Opal Lee, when she and her family fled their home in darkness in hope of surviving the racist mob that had come for them.
Police stood by as the White mob wielding baseball bats gathered outside for a raid on June 19, 1939, and forced Lee, then 12, and her family from the Fort Worth home they had just moved into the day before — breaking the windows with stones, smashing the furniture, burning their belongings. The event was traumatic for Lee, now a 97-year-old civil rights activist known for her tireless efforts to turn Juneteenth, the day commemorating Black freedom from slavery, into a national holiday.
