Juneteenth Walk of Freedom returns to Fort Worth. Opal Lee will attend virtually
Opal’s Lee Walk for Freedom is coming back to Fort Worth but without Lee — considered the “Grandmother of Juneteenth” — to lead it.
According to WFAA, Lee, 98, will not participate in the walk, as her doctors are “concerned about her health and the forecasted heat.”
She was hospitalized last month when she was in Ohio to be honored with the International Freedom Conductor Award at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.
“Although I am unable to return the many texts and calls I have received over the past few days, please know that each one is appreciated; I am truly grateful for your concern and good wishes,” Lee said in a statement on her Facebook page after her hospitalization.
Her granddaughter, Dione Sims, the president and founder of Unity Unlimited Inc., which is in charge of the Juneteenth walk, will lead the 2.5-mile walk in Lee’s place. Sims told WFAA that Lee will join the walk virtually.
The event will take place at 9 a.m. on Thursday, June 19, beginning at Farrington Field in the Cultural District, 1501 University Drive. It will cost $35 for adults to participate in the walk; $12.86 for spectators; and $18.23 for non-walkers to buy a shirt. There will be an after-party at Farrington Field.
To buy tickets go to opalswalkdallastx.raceroster.com.
The walk, which started in 2016, was held to lobby for having Juneteenth recognized as a national holiday. Since it became a holiday in 2021, the mission has shifted to educating people nationally about Juneteenth and its focus on freedom, according to Sims.
The walk was in Dallas at the African American Museum of Dallas last year and will take place in Washington, D.C., in 2026 at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Cities across the country and world are expected to have walks to coincide with the walk in Texas, including in Los Angeles and Tokyo.
For years, Lee championed for recognition of Juneteenth as a national holiday. It commemorates the end of slavery in the United States on June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, which President Lincoln had signed more than two years earlier.
Juneteenth had long been commemorated in Texas, as it became a state holiday in 1980. In Fort Worth, more than 30,000 people celebrated Juneteenth in 1975 in Sycamore Park.
In 2016, Lee began her campaign for the national holiday with a symbolic walk to Washington, D.C. Lee was 89 at the time and crossed over 14 states and 1,400 miles. She relaunched the campaign in 2019, crossing over seven states until the next year when COVID-19 cut the trip short.
On Juneteenth in 2020, Lee walked 2.5 miles from the Fort Worth Convention Center down Lancaster to the Will Rogers auditorium. She was in attendance when on June 21, 2021, President Joe Biden signed a federal bill that nationally recognized the holiday.
The walk is 2.5 miles to symbolize the two and a half years it took for slaves in Texas to realize they had been freed.
This story was originally published June 18, 2025 at 5:09 PM.
