A racist mob forced Opal Lee out of her home more than 80 years ago. Now, she has the land back.
The grandmother of Juneteenth will also have a house built on the property.
In 1939, when Opal Lee was just 12 years old, she and her family fled their Fort Worth, Texas, home following threats from a racist mob who eventually destroyed the house and the family’s belongings.
Now, the 97-year-old Lee has the land back, and a nonprofit group is building a home on it for her.
“I could have done a holy dance, I tell you,” Lee told the television station WFAA. “That was really, oh boy!”
Lee is known as the grandmother of Juneteenth for her tireless efforts to get the day recognized as a holiday commemorating the end of slavery. In 2016, at the age of 89, she walked 1,400 miles to bring attention to her cause and convince lawmakers to make Juneteenth a national holiday, now celebrated each June 19.
It’s a sad irony, then, that the racist mob descended on her home on June 19, 1939.
Newspaper reports said that as many as 500 angry white people went to the Lee home, which the family had just moved into, forced them out, destroyed their house, and burned their belongings. Police stood by and watched, the reports noted.
“The people didn’t want us,” Lee told ABC7 in Los Angeles. “They started gathering. The paper said the police couldn’t control the mob. My father came with a gun, and police told them if he busted a cap, they’d let the mob have us. They started throwing things at the house, and when they left, they took out the furniture and burned it and burned the house.”
Fast-forward to the present day. Trinity Habitat for Humanity purchased a vacant lot at 940 E. Annie St. in Fort Worth without knowing the terrible history of the home that used to stand there. Lee called Habitat CEO Gage Yager, whom she knew, and asked if she could buy the lot.
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Habitat did one better. It sold the lot to Lee for $10 and offered to build her a house, The Washington Post reported. The groundbreaking happened last September.
“It’s both an amazing and terrible story, and hopefully, as she says, it comes full circle,” Yager told the Post. “We’ll build a home, laugh, cry and move her in. And we’ll celebrate the moment when that happens.”
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