Opal Lee

Opal Lee, the “grandmother of Juneteenth,” celebrated the holiday while growing up in Texas. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they were liberated—two-and-a-half years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery. In 1939, when Lee was twelve, her Juneteenth was marked by tragedy when a white supremacist mob burned down her family’s home.

At age eighty-nine, Lee launched Opal’s Walk 2 D.C. to advocate for recognition of June 19 as a federal holiday. Her two-and-a-half-mile marches (the distance symbolizing the period of delayed liberation) spread across the United States. Five years later, she achieved success: on June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act.

Here, Sedrick Huckaby portrays his friend life-sized, sitting at her dining room table. The coffee mug symbolizes the viewer’s “seat at the table” and invites us to join Lee in conversation.