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Geoff Bennett:
One hundred and fifty-eight years ago today, Union Army General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to inform the country’s last enslaved people that they had been freed under the Emancipation Proclamation.
The day we now know as Juneteenth was formally recognized as a national holiday two years ago, due in large part to the activism of a 96-year-old retired Texas schoolteacher.
Opal Lee first gained national attention in 2016, when the then-89-year-old walked more than 1,400 miles from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C., in a campaign to convince lawmakers to recognize Juneteenth as a federal holiday.
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