Marshall native Opal Lee gets new home 85 years after mob incident | Texas

FORT WORTH — Opal Lee, the 97-year-old Marshallese native known for her efforts to make Juneteenth a national holiday, received the keys Friday to her new home, built on the same tree-lined corner lot in Fort Worth from which her family was evicted by a racist mob when she was 12.

“I’m so happy I don’t know what to do,” said Lee, sitting in a rocking chair on the house’s porch shortly before the ceremony.

The ceremony welcoming Lee to his newly completed home came just days before the nationwide celebration of Juneteenth, the holiday that marks the end of slavery in the United States and means so much to Lee. Several local groups came together to build and furnish the home, which was completed less than three months after the first wall went up.

Lee said she plans to host an open house to get to know her new neighbors.

“Everyone will know that this will be a happy place,” she said.

Juneteenth marks the 85th anniversary of the day an angry mob gathered outside the Fort Worth home Lee’s parents had just purchased. The mob was angry because a black family had moved in. As the crowd grew larger, her parents sent her and her siblings to a friend’s house several blocks away and eventually left the house themselves.

According to newspaper articles, the mob, which had grown to about 500 people by then, smashed windows in the house and dragged furniture into the street and smashed it. She said her family never returned home and her parents never spoke about what happened that day. Instead, they just went to work to buy a new house.

Lee said it wasn’t something she thought about for long either, but in recent years she started thinking about getting the property back. When she learned Trinity Habitat for Humanity had purchased the land, Lee called the CEO and her longtime friend Gage Yager.

Yager said it was not until that phone call several years ago when Lee asked if she could buy the property that he learned what had happened to her family on June 19, 1939. The property was sold to her for $10.

HistoryMaker Homes built the house for Lee for free, while Texas Capital, a financial services company, financed the home’s furnishings. JCPenney donated appliances, dishes and linens.

In recent years, Lee has become known as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth” after years of getting people to join her in successfully making Juneteenth a national holiday. The former teacher and school district counselor has been a tireless advocate in Fort Worth for decades, including establishing a large community garden.

During Friday’s ceremony, Myra Savage, board chair of Trinity Habitat for Humanity, told Lee, “Thank you for being a living example of what your home stands for today: community, rebuilding, hope and light.”

Lee said she was so excited to move from her Fort Worth home of more than half a century to the new house that she planned to take only her toothbrush, which she had with her on Friday.

“I just want so much for this community and others to work together to make this the best city, the best state, the best country in the entire world. And together we can do it,” Lee said.