The Grandmother of Juneteenth
June 19, 2026
- Dr. Lewis ShepherdOn October 7, 2026, Dr. Opal Lee will celebrate her 100th birthday in Fort Worth, Texas. A few months earlier, on Friday, June 19, the nation will mark Juneteenth, the sixth observance since it became a federal holiday in 2021. How are these two milestones connected? The answer is Dr. Lee herself.
The story begins more than a century before her birth. Although the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, it could not be implemented in states still under Confederate control. Texas was the last of those states to receive the news that slavery had ended.
On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger who arrived in Galveston and announced that the enslaved people of Texas were free. For many, the endearing term “Juneteenth,” which was a combination of the month and the date, was born.
More than 150 years later, Dr. Lee made it her mission to raise support for Juneteenth as a federal holiday. In her drive for this recognition, she secured over 1.5 million signatures to present to President Joe Biden in Washington D.C. On June 17, 2021, her dream became reality as President Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law.
As a result of her tireless effort to recognize this milestone as a part of American history, Dr. Lee was given the honorary title “the grandmother of Juneteenth.” It is fitting, then, as she approaches her 100th birthday this October, that we acknowledge Dr. Lee along with the celebration of Juneteenth — a holiday she did so much to bring into public view.
In order to change the culture, Dr. Lee had to learn to endure with the hope that someday the world would accept and embrace people regardless of their ethnicity. In our statement of faith, Ouachita is called to be an intentional community of belonging based on the Gospel, which transcends racial, ethnic, cultural, socio-economic and national divisions. As believers, we are to set the standard in which the Bible declares that “There is no respecter of persons with God” (Romans 2:11).
Dr. Lewis Shepherd is vice president for community & intercultural engagement at Ouachita.
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