Opal Lee recalls: “I felt like there ought to be something else I could do. I decided if a little old lady in tennis shoes was walking up and down the highway, somebody would pay attention. From the church I walked two and a half miles to symbolize that the slaves in Texas didn’t know they were free for two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. I walked. . . . I was invited all over these United States. And people was so nice—who, too, wanted Juneteenth to become a holiday. My granddaughter got the word to go to the White House where President Biden was signing to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. I could have done a holy dance.”
Also named Jubilation Day, Juneteenth is more than a holiday. Its celebration hearkens back to God’s commands for redemption among His people (see Leviticus 25). God called the Hebrews to redemptive rest and worship (vv. 1–5), redemptive liberty (vv. 8–17), redemptive justice (vv. 35–43), and more. Scripture shows us that God’s plans are incompatible with prejudice and injustice.
Opal concludes: “I know Martin King, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and Sojourner Truth fought so hard to have everybody free. This is just a little push and the youngsters coming on are going to make it a tidal wave and everybody is going to understand that freedom is for all of us.”
