Opal Lee, the 97-year-old Fort Worth educator-activist who successfully campaigned to make Juneteenth a federal holiday was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom Friday in Washington, D.C.
Lee is often called the “Grandmother of Juneteenth” in recognition of her tireless advocacy for Juneteenth, a holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. Her campaign came to fruition when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act on June 17, 2021.
Biden honored Lee and 18 others during Friday’s White House ceremony recognizing a diverse range of individuals for “exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.”
The president described the honorees as “incredible people whose relentless curiosity, inventiveness, ingenuity and hope have kept faith in a better tomorrow.”
Three of the recipients were honored posthumously.
Among those who received the award that Biden said is “the nation’s highest civilian honor” were former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; former Vice President Al Gore; slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers; actor Michelle Yeoh, the first Asian woman to win an Academy Award for best actress; the late Jim Thorpe, the first Native American to win Olympic gold for the United States; and Clarence B. Jones, a lawyer who provided legal counsel to Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement and helped write the opening paragraphs of the “I Have a Dream” speech that King delivered at the Lincoln Memorial at the 1963 March on Washington.
“These nineteen Americans built teams, coalitions, movements, organizations, and businesses that shaped America for the better,” the White House said in announcing the honorees. “They are the pinnacle of leadership in their fields. They consistently demonstrated over their careers the power of community, hard work, and science.”
Politicians among the recipients in addition to Pelosi and Gore were former New York mayor and philanthropist Michael Bloomberg; Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C.; former Sen. Elizabeth Dole; Biden’s former climate envoy John Kerry; and former Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who died in 2013.
The other medal recipients:
— Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit Catholic priest who founded and runs Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention and rehabilitation program.
— Phil Donahue, a journalist and former daytime TV talk-show host.
— Katie Ledecky, the most decorated female swimmer in history.
— Ellen Ochoa, the first Hispanic woman in space and the second female director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
— Jane Rigby, an astronomer who is chief scientist of the world’s most powerful telescope. She grew up in Delaware, Biden’s home state.
— Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers and the first Hispanic woman to lead a national union in the U.S. The union has endorsed Biden’s reelection bid and backed him in 2020.
— Judy Shepard, who co-founded the Matthew Shepard Foundation, named after her son, a gay 21-year-old University of Wyoming student who died in 1998 after he was beaten and tied to a fence.
In 2022, Biden presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 17 people, including gymnast Simone Biles, the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and gun-control advocate Gabby Giffords.
Biden also knows how it feels to receive the medal. As president, Barack Obama presented Biden, his vice president, with the medal a week before their administration ended in 2017.
