“It’s really just another battle we have to fight.”
Those are words Dr. Opal Lee, the “Grandmother of Juneteeth,” shared with theGrio reflecting on the persistent attempts to erase Black history, stories, and voices from the fabric of American life. And while she spoke them days before the National Park Service quietly removed slavery exhibits from Philadelphia’s historic President’s House, and before the nation erupted once again in outrage over the killing of Alex Pretti, echoing the same cries Black communities have been shouting into what often feels like an abyss, her perspective remains both painfully and powerfully relevant.
“We have to make sure that people are aware of what we’ve gone through, not for pity, but to understand it, so that it doesn’t happen again, and so I’ll be bringing it up every chance I get, and I hope others will too, to let folk know our history,” she advised.
There’s something so powerful about speaking to your elders. And perhaps one of the most beautiful truths about being Black is the inexplicable spiritual tether that connects us across generations. That’s why hearing Dr. Opal Lee say, “think of me as your grandma here,” during our interview didn’t feel like a casual aside but rather an affirmation of the safe space that can sometimes reveal itself in intergenerational conversations.
Dr. Lee sat down with theGrio to reflect on her recently released “Inspiring Women” Barbie doll, a series designed to pay tribute to “courageous women who took risks, changed rules, and paved the way for generations of girls to dream bigger than ever before.” Created in Dr. Lee’s likeness, the doll commemorates Lee at 89 years old when she courageously walked from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C., to raise awareness about Juneteenth in 2016.
While Lee shared her excitement about the Barbie collaboration, the activist and retired teacher’s bigger focus with this partnership, like with all of her work, is to pass something on to young people.
“[This] Barbie is going to be able to show them things that they can do at that age now, and I’m looking forward to the things that she’s going to pass on to young people,” she said humbly speaking of the doll in the third person.
After jokingly noting that, this doll is her, Dr. Lee doubled down on her message: “I just want the young people to be aware that this is their responsibility too, [to] not leave it up to my mom and my dad. [And say] ‘I can find people to talk to about what’s going on in our neighborhood and the elections and things I can talk to them about that kind of thing, too. I don’t have to wait, and I can pass it on to some other young people who aren’t aware.’”
It’s no secret that we are navigating inexplicable times as a society. Whether you find yourself enraged, frustrated, heartbroken, or all of the above by the constant wave of headlines, the reality is that we are all feeling the weight of the world’s socio-political state. And just as adults are feeling it, Dr. Lee and her granddaughter Dione Sims noted that children are also seeing, feeling, and processing these changes, so don’t count them out of these conversations.
“You won’t know what young people are thinking until you talk to them. And so build that bridge of communication to make sure we are helping them process what they’re seeing and hearing,” Sims stressed. “Just talking to your kids while you’re driving them to school, talking to them about what they’re experiencing and what they’re hearing.”
“I would tell them to share with their young people,” Dr. Lee echoed, giving her advice to those raising the next generation. “Young people don’t need to be shielded as much as we think. They need to understand what’s going on so they can make some decisions, and the decisions they make might be the ones that are good for all of us. So we must include the young people. Don’t push them aside or neglect them. We’ve just got to make them aware of what’s going on, too.”
And sometimes that inclusion means meeting them where they are, particularly as they play, because as Sims noted, “when kids pretend they are actually telling you back what they’re hearing and what they’re processing.”
“We can’t discount play, because that’s how children process,” she added. “Don’t necessarily interrupt them while they’re playing, but listen to them because, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So if something’s gotten in there that they’ve been hearing, you’ll hear it when they play and roleplay with their dolls and toys. And so that’s a greater way of understanding how they’re processing the world that they’re living in.”
The power of play is one of the things that inspires Barbie’s mission. Through this collaboration and the creation of dolls with various disabilities and professions, the legacy doll brand is opening up space for conversations amidst the growing anti-DEI movement, which Sims says “keeps people’s histories and keeps people’s stories alive, because as kids play, they learn from their play.” Now, parents have a new way to introduce a new piece of Black history to their children with Dr. Lee’s doll ($37.80)
“I want parents to know that they have such an opportunity to pass things on to their children and to talk to their parents to find out things that they don’t know about. It’s a two-way street, and we can all help each other,” Dr. Lee concluded. “I just want to get that over to everybody that from the youngest to the oldest, we have a mission to help our people in any way we can.”
