In Fort Worth, Opal Lee meets those who know her best: fellow teachers and ex-students

Opal Lee has been barnstorming the nation, telling her heroic story of Juneteenth unity to colleges and civic groups amazed at the power and energy of this bold 96-year-old Texan.

But the other day, she spoke to an audience that has known her for years:

Her fellow schoolteachers and students in Fort Worth public schools.

“Hello, young people!” Lee said, grinning at the laughter from a luncheon full of retired teachers.

Some were also her former third-graders from the old Amanda McCoy Elementary, back in the days when she taught for $2,000 a year.

“And you’re all young people,” she said, “if you’re not 96!”

The nation now knows the phenomenon of Opal Lee.

A teacher, counselor and civic activist, she led Fort Worth community agencies and charity causes in the civil rights era, then settled into senior life quietly leading a community food pantry.

For decades, she never mentioned how as a little girl, her family home was attacked, ransacked and destroyed on Juneteenth 1939 by a white mob trying to drive Black renters off East Annie Street.

In her 80s, she set out determined to make Juneteenth a national celebration of unity.

“See, I was about 89, and I had raised four children, gone to a college and university, helped start a school, a food bank and farm,” she said.

“But I hadn’t done enough.”

She set out on a “walk” to Washington, D.C., walking and riding to barnstorm for a national holiday. With help from Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and other celebrities, she raised support from millions.

In 2021, President Joe Biden knelt before her and thanked her for all her hard work as he signed the holiday into law.

She did not stop there.

“There’s so much more we need to do,” Lee told the school retirees.

“It’s up to you to get us out of the quagmire we’re in — the joblessness — the homelessness ... We are the richest country in the world, and we ought to be able to show others how we can get things done together.”

Among the former teachers in the crowd at Broadway Baptist Church were some of Lee’s former third-grade students from McCoy or Dunbar Elementary, including Doris Murray Hawthorne.

“She was a wonderful teacher,” Hawthorne said.

“We had such a wonderful school at McCoy — she was so much fun. We loved our teachers,” Hawthorne said.

The school was built in 1955 at 2100 Cooper St. to serve Black children in a long-gone neighborhood near railroads west of Eighth Avenue.

“We were just glad to get away from home,” Hawthorne said.

“I taught third-graders for so long,” Lee said, “I began to act like one.”

She is back on the road this weekend, speaking and accepting an honorary doctorate from her alma mater, Wiley College, in her East Texas hometown of Marshall.

She’s signing a new book, “Juneteenth: A Children’s Story.”

And she’s still raising capital to build a national Juneteenth museum in Fort Worth.

“I’m still walking and still talking,” she said.

And teaching the world.