Opal Lee, the grandmother of the Juneteenth holiday and a guest on the Unfinished Church podcast. wants you to take a walk.
Lee, 95, is credited with having Juneteenth made a national holiday when she began walking from her home in Texas to Washington, D.C., to ask lawmakers to honor the anniversary of the news of emancipation arriving in Texas on June 19, 1865, two-and-a-half years after other enslaved people knew they were free.
This year, on the first anniversary of the national celebration, Lee will walk 2.5 miles and she wants people who care about justice to join her.
For Lee, it’s personal. The great-granddaughter of slaves, her house was burned down by a mob of white supremacists when she was a child.
“I’ll keep on walking. I’ll keep on talking to make this a better place for all of us to live,” she told reporters. “If people have been taught to hate, they can be taught to love. And if there’s an army of people teaching folks to love, hey, we’re going to solve this problem.”
Hear Lee talk about “choosing a path forward,” on the Unfinished Church podcast, in which she reflects on how God prepares, redeems, and restores us to be the people we were created to be.