You learned a lot, too … Everybody had a job to do.” “Those were fun summers,” she said wistfully. She remembered enjoying her childhood and described it as idyllic at times - the days she spent shooting marbles with her brothers or the summers she’d help her grandparents tend their 40 acres in Texarkana. “And it didn’t occur to us to be unhappy about it.” We didn’t know what the hell was happening, she said. We hadn’t been taught what segregation was.
“We hadn’t been taught to dislike anybody. “There are still patterns.”īut Lee and other Black children didn’t know to be outraged. The threat of violence against Black residents was so high in some areas, she said, families kept guns and kept watch throughout the night. After the curfew, she said, the city would drain the pool, then refill it for the white families to use the next day.īlack families were always aware they could be targeted for hate crimes, she recalled, and those concerns often followed them home. When it came to Juneteenth, she and other Black children saw it as the one day a year they were allowed to swim in the Forest Park pool. Highway 121 divided “Black Riverside” from “white Riverside,” with Southside similarly divided. Instead of a tight-knit community as she’d had in Marshall, she said Jim Crow left Fort Worth neighborhoods separated by race - a division that remains in some parts of the city. Lee (nee Flake) moved to Fort Worth in the late 1930s and remembered it feeling very different from Marshall, where she lived until she was 9.
#UNITY PARK FORT WORTH FREE#
Get to know your community better with our free newsletters. It’s easy to see the girl Lee was in her childhood - the self-described “tomboy” who loved climbing trees and playing with her two younger brothers. During this interview, her home was filled with activity, and several people came through her front door, including Farm manager, Gregory Joel, carrying an armful of fresh lettuce. She helps run Opal’s Farm (a 2.5-acre community garden that provides organic produce to farmers’ markets and the Community Food Bank), authored “Juneteenth: A Children’s Story” in 2019, and is a founding board member for the upcoming National Juneteenth Museum (among many others). Technically she “retired” in 1977, but in reality she’s busier than most people in their 30s. Multiple framed honorary degrees from colleges around Texas are stacked along a wall in Lee’s home entryway, and numerous awards line a table in the hall by her bedroom. But there’s so much that needs to be done,” she said. “We’re comfortable, we’re accepted, yeah. But while children today share classrooms as she never could, she said society is still recovering from Jim Crow.
The scope of history she’s observed is vast, from the Jim Crow days of her childhood and watching her daughter picket for civil rights in the 1960s, to standing beside President Joe Biden as he signed the bill marking Juneteenth a federal holiday. Her life is not just a snapshot of the city’s history, but more of a long exposure capturing the city’s complex history with race. Lee has lived in Fort Worth for 86 years. She excitedly talks about the latest additions to her library, and it’s easy to see the Opal Lee her friends know best: a woman who brings passion to everything she does. Excitement gets her moving, and she’s out of the room in a flash, suddenly hard to keep up with.
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You can also coordinate a pick-up with Jackie Fritzel.Opal Lee is not just the “Grandmother of Junteenth,” a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated civil rights activist for her March2DC campaign and her advocacy to make Juneteenth a national holiday - she’s also full of surprises.Īt 96, she walks slowly into the room for her interview, but everything changes when she decides to bring out her favorite books. Donations can be brought to the church (there's a basket in front of the children's check-in desk). If you would like to make a donation, They are currently looking for spring clothing, blankets, sleeping bags, tote bags, hygiene items, and prepackaged food items. We will unload and move our cars - we try to distribute items at the corner of Presidio and Cedar St. Please park on Presidio and not Cedar St. Presidio Street and the cross street is Cedar St. If you would like to meet at Unity Park where we distribute the items, arrive around 9:30 am. If you would like to caravan, meet at the back of the Kroger (corner of Alta Vista and Timberland) parking lot close to McDonalds promptly at 8:45 am. We'll be joining Project Hope in distributing items to the homeless community at Unity Park in downtown Fort Worth.
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