Texas Senate unveils Opal Lee portrait. Who else has a portrait in the chamber?
A portrait of Fort Worth’s Opal Lee, the “Grandmother of Juneteenth,” was unveiled Wednesday in the Texas Senate.
Her portrait is the first to be added to the chamber’s walls in about four decades, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said, and the second portrait honoring a Black Texan to be displayed.
“This is a historic day,” Patrick said on the Senate floor.
It has not been determined where her portrait will hang, said Chris Currens, a spokesperson for the State Preservation Board in an email.
There are 19 portraits in the Senate: Images of a former U.S. president, legislators and Confederate leaders.
Here are the portraits displayed in the Texas Senate.
- A.M. Aikin, Jr., who served 41 years in the Senate starting in 1937
Stephen F. Austin, who’s been called “The Father of Texas
- Joseph Weldon Bailey, who served as a U.S. senator in the early 1900s
- David Culberson, a former state legislator and lieutenant colonel of the Eighteenth Texas Infantry, which fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War
Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate states
Lorenzo De Zavala, the first vice president of the Republic of Texas
Barnett Gibbs, a former Texas lieutenant governor who served in the late 1880s
Henry B. Gonzalez, the longest serving Hispanic member of Congress
President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texan who was sworn in after John F. Kennedy was assassinated and later reelected
- Albert Sidney Johnston, a Confederate general
- Barbara Jordan, a U.S. representative and state representative, who was the first first Black woman elected to the Texas Senate
- Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, president of the Republic of Texas
- Reuben Marmaduke Potter, a soldier, author and customs officer
- John H. Reagan, a Confederate postmaster general
Thomas Jefferson Rusk, who served as commander in chief of the Republic of Texas’ army
- Alfonso Steele, a survivor of the battle of San Jacinto
Joanna Troutman, who designed an early Lone Star Texas flag
Robert McAlpin Williamson, a politician in the 1800s
- William P. Zuber, who fought in the Battle of San Jacinto and was a confederate soldier
