Opal Lee, the grandmother of Juneteenth, was a young girl when white supremacists burned down her family’s home in Fort Worth.
Now, in 2024, 85 years later, Lee, 97, will have a new home on the same piece of land where her family’s home once stood. Texas Capital Bank, Trinity Habitat for Humanity and HistoryMaker Homes will build the house at no cost to Lee.
Her family’s home was burned by a mob to protest “the encroachment of Negroes into a white residential district,” according to a story in The Dallas Morning News.
“I hope I can keep walking and talking and telling people that we are all one people,” Lee says. “And the sooner we accept that, the better.”