It’s Ms. Opal’s Birthday and you’re invited!
The 2026 Opal’s Walk for Freedom series in honor of Ms. Opal’s 100th birthday offers unity-focused experiences that highlight civic pride, historical awareness, and cross-cultural celebration.
This Juneteenth, Ms. Opal and Dione invite everyone across the country to walk 2.5 miles with them in person or virtually because freedom is a shared value worth celebrating.
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Ms. Opal is a voice of history with a message for the future. Many consider her the “Grandmother of Juneteenth” but if you ask her who she is, she will tell you she’s “just a little old lady in tennis shoes getting in everybody’s business.”
At 89 years old, Ms. Opal started her walking campaign for Juneteenth holiday awareness and launched an online petition that garnered 1.6 million signatures in support of the very idea. On June 17, 2021 she was present at the White House when President Biden signed the Juneteenth Independence Day Act that established June 19th of every year a national holiday.
At 96 years old, Dr. Opal Lee is still determined to see the Juneteenth national holiday be a reflective point of the year where we ask "Are we free yet?" because as she puts it "None of us are free if we're not all free." Conducting her annual walk all over the country will remind us to check the progress we've made.