June 19 Grandma Opal Lee honored with portrait at Texas Capitol

Opal Lee, a 96-year-old Texan whose efforts helped June 16 A federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States was only the second black man to have his portrait hung in the Senate Hall of the State Capitol on Wednesday.

Legislators gave a long applause to Lee, who stood next to the president two years ago. Joe Biden as June 19 officially became the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established in 1983. She organized city walks in the United States as part of her campaign to have June 19 recognized as a federal holiday.

Lee was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.

Her painting will join those of other famous Texan figures on the walls of the 135-year-old Capitol, where about a dozen Confederate markers remain in and around the building. Lee, a Fort Worth-born often referred to as “June 19th Grandma,” joins the late U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan as the only two black Texans to have portraits on the Senate floor.

Jordan’s portrait was hung in 1973.

“Change someone’s mind, because minds can be changed,” Lee told reporters after the ceremony. “If people have been taught to hate, they can be taught to love, and that’s up to you.”

June 19 is celebrated on June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers brought the message of freedom to enslaved blacks in Galveston, Texas, two months after the surrender of the Confederacy. This was about 2.5 years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in the southern states.

Lee, who began advocating for making June a holiday at age 89, has been praised by bipartisan senators, who have taken turns praising her tenacity and legacy. Among them was State Senator Royce West, a Democrat who is one of only two black senators in the 31-member House.

Opponents of Confederate monuments at the State Capitol have fought for years to remove them, and West said there is still a need to discuss which portraits are “appropriate” to remain on the state senate floor and which should be in the museum’s collection.

“You can’t hide from the history of this state,” West said.

Rosalind Roland, 62, was among the lively crowd that gathered in the gallery upstairs to watch the opening. She said her family has been organizing the June 15 celebration for 150 years, but last year they celebrated it as an official national holiday for the first time thanks to Li’s work.

“This is probably the most important moment in black history that I will ever have,” Roland said.

Texas Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick, the Republican who leads the Senate, told Lee when she visited the Capitol in 2021 that her portrait should be on the hall’s walls. After Wednesday’s opening, Lee said she wanted to “do a whole dance” the moment she saw the portrait painted by Texan artist Jess Coleman.

“It was beautiful,” she said. “I didn’t know I looked so good.”

Opal Lee is known as the “grandmother of June 10th”. But how did she get there? It all started with a walk from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., and ended with President Joe Biden signing a law officially recognizing this day as a national holiday. Lee chatted with LX News narrator Beth Peake about her journey to this point.