Visit Fort Worth/Leo Wesson
Opal Lee speaks at the 2021 Visit Fort Worth Annual Meeting.
Visit Fort Worth offered Opal Lee an open mic Friday morning. Lee accepted.
“I’m humble, I’m thankful, I’m proud, I’m at a loss for words,” the 94-year-old Lee, honored by Visit Fort Worth with its annual Hospitality Award at the bureau’s annual meeting Friday at the Omni Hotel Fort Worth, said. “And those of you who know me know I’m seldom at a loss.”
Lee collected 1.5 million signatures on a petition to create a national holiday for Juneteenth — that is, June 19, the day slaves in Texas learned they were free after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Visit Fort Worth was a leading sponsor of Lee's Walk 2 DC celebrating Juneteenth 2020, which garnered national attention from news media and celebrities including Usher, Diddy, and Lupita Nyong’o, and a feature of Lee by The New York Times.
“Opal’s a legend,” Marty Leonard, the Fort Worth philanthropist and businesswoman, said during a video honoring Lee that was played during the breakfast.
“You might wonder what this has to do with tourism,” Mark Nurdin, Visit Fort Worth’s chairman and CEO of Bank of Texas’ Fort Worth region, said in introducing Lee. “Opal Lee believes in a message of freedom and equality for everyone. A community pulling together for everyone — that sounds like a pretty good place to visit.”
Lee took the stage to a standing ovation. In accepting the award, she moved through numerous topics, ranging from love, to what people of color want, how Fort Worth should greet its new police chief, and who she thinks Fort Worth should elect as mayor in May, frequently punctuating her talk with dry jokes.
On her message of community, Lee said, “If we’ve been taught to hate, we can be taught to love.”
People should take the time to reach out to each and listen, she said. “Of course, if you’re the culprit, come see me.”
On what people of color want: Education, health care, equality in pay, action on climate change, “don’t gerrymander me out of the neighborhood.”
“You do know we’ve been denied these rights in some instances,” she said.
Lee addressed projects she’s working on, including an African-American museum she needs help in raising money for, that she would like to open on the James E. Guinn campus at Interstate 35 and West Rosedale Street. “Please don’t make me ask Mark Cuban or the Ford Foundation for the money to do these projects,” she said.
From there, she pivoted to the police. “Is the police chief here?” she said to laughter from the audience, asking if the new Fort Worth chief, Neil Noakes, was in the room. “Where is the police chief?”
As Noakes stood from his breakfast and waved, Lee said, “I want you all to love on him. I want you to do that before you start running his department.”
Finally, Lee weighed in on the mayor’s race, urging the 350 people in the room and 300 watching virtually to back Deborah Peoples, the Tarrant County Democratic chair and a candidate to take the seat being vacated by Mayor Betsy Price. “She has earned your vote,” Lee said, to scattered applause.
