Dr. Opal Lee will add a new accomplishment to her resume Friday when she is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Joe Biden.
It is the nation’s highest civilian honor, given to people who have made exemplary contributions to the “prosperity, values, or security of the United States,” according to The White House. Lee will be one of 19 recipients of the honor this year.
Dr. Lee, an activist and educator, made national headlines for her decades-long advocacy to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. It commemorates the day more than 150 years ago when 250,000 enslaved people in Texas, including men, women, and children, were freed. This news, however, came almost two and a half years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1867, the Freedmen’s Bureau organized the first Juneteenth celebration in the capital. The name (melding the words `June’ and `nineteenth’), the day was first celebrated in the Texas state capital.
President Biden officially made Juneteenth a national holiday in 2021, and Lee was on hand to see this important day become recognized across the country. With the publication of her children’s book, Juneteenth: A Children’s Story, Lee, who is now 97 years old, has continued to educate the masses about Juneteenth, particularly children. In addition to receiving a new home where her childhood home once stood, she has also been rewarded for her work. It was burned down by an angry mob 85 years ago.
She has famously said, “If we can teach people to hate, then we can teach people to love.”
Other honorees who will receive Presidential Medal Of Freedom include Civil Rights leader Megar Evers (posthumously), Representative Jim Clyburn, Former Vice President Al Gore and Kathleen Genevieve Ledecky, the most decorated female swimmer in history.
