Barely a week after arriving back in the UK from Texas, I’m thinking of my friends who are Stateside as today, June 19th, marks the annual commemoration known as JUNETEENTH.
A blend of the words “June” and “nineteenth”, Juneteenth — officially JUNETEENTH NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE DAY — commemorates the ending of slavery in the United States.
More specifically, it marks the date — June 19th 1865 — on which Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War.
This is the brief story of Juneteenth, and the Texan native who set about putting the date in the calendar.
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Opal Lee was born on October 7th 1926 in Marshall, Texas. The eldest of 3 children, her grandmother was born into slavery in Louisiana.
Aged 10, she moved with her family to Fort Worth, Texas.
It was June 19th, 1939 (WW2 started later that year), when a 12-year-old Opal recalls an angry mob showing up at this family home to protest Black residents moving into the neighborhood. Her parents sent her to a friend’s house and, the night, the mob burned down the Lee family home.
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A side note: the above is particularly shocking to me, the writer, having just spent 2 months in the flourishing, friendly, diverse, neighborhood that is present-day Fort Worth. Indeed, Fort Worth adjoins Dallas to form the DFW / Dallas-Forth Worth metroplex, of which of the main train stations is EBJ Union, named after another native Texan — Eddie Bernice Johnson — born in Waco and an African American woman who was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1992, becoming the first registered nurse in Congress, entering politics after 16 years serving as Chief Psychiatric Nurse at the Dallas Veterans Administration Hospital.
All the more remarkable given that her high school guidance counselor told her that her wish (at the time) to become a doctor would not be possible because she was female.
You can read more about her here.
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Aged 89, Opal walked from Texas to Washington D.C., gathering 1.5 million signatures to raise awareness of Juneteenth and petition Congress to make it a federal holiday.
On June 17th 2021, President Joe Biden signed Senate Bill S.475, making Juneteenth the eleventh federal holiday.
May Juneteenth be a peaceful, beautiful celebration in honor of Opal Lee, the African American community — and every community on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch; like me! I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.
’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, And grace my fears relieved; How precious did that grace appear The hour I first believed!
The Lord hath promised good to me, His word my hope secures; He will my shield and portion be As long as life endures.
When we’ve been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we first begun.
— words from AMAZING GRACE written in 1772 by John Newton, an English clergyman and former slave ship captain
