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Lee spoke at a ceremony celebrating freedom, as a statue of Harriet Tubman that has been in Bastrop as part of an exhibit gets set to leave town.

BASTROP, Texas — A 9-foot monument of Harriet Tubman has been in Bastrop at the Kerr Community Center since June, in honor of Juneteenth.

As the statue now gets set to leave Bastrop to head to the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, a closing ceremony took place with Opal Lee, known as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth.” Lee was instrumental in making Juneteenth a federal holiday. 

Bastrop community leader Dock Jackson emceed the closing ceremony and helped introduce Lee to an audience of community members. 

“It’s so important that we have our history shared and that we pass it on to many generations,” Jackson said. “So that they’ll know what type of history and what type of world we’ve lived in before their time.”

To raise awareness for Juneteenth, Lee began a walking campaign in 2016, taking her from Fort Worth to other cities with the goal of visiting the nation’s capital. 

“Juneteenth means freedom. Not for Texans, not just for Black people, but for people. Freedom for everybody. And so it needed to be spread outside Texas. Others needed to know the significance,” Lee said. “If there was a little old lady in tennis shoes going to Washington, D.C., to get Juneteenth made a national holiday, then somebody would take notice.”

As the city of Bastrop says goodbye to the tribute to Tubman – a woman who was determined to take control of her own destiny – Jackson said it is important to learn from the lessons of the past. 

“She didn’t read or write and yet still she was able to navigate the, you know, the highways and byways or the backroads and things to get people all the way to freedom,” Jackson said. 

Now Lee is determined for others to keep traveling those roads still not taken in the fight to keep freedom alive. 

“I’d like the people in that audience to make themselves a committee of one, to change somebody’s mind,” Lee said. “If people could be taught to hate, they can be taught to love and it’s up to us to do it.”

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