“My grandmother has always been a humanitarian,” said Sims. 

This was true long before Lee began publicly advocating for Juneteenth’s recognition as a federal holiday, back when she worked as an educator and counselor. According to Sims, Lee’s earlier career demonstrated the foundational principles of supporting human dignity and potential that would guide her later work.

“She was responsible for seeing why students weren’t being successful in school,” Sims said. “Her job was to visit the home to try and find out why the kid wasn’t in school. She saw that they didn’t have food. She saw that they didn’t have clothing. She saw that they didn’t have utilities. The conditions they were living in were so poor, so how could a kid be successful at all?”

Central to Lee’s impact is a long-held belief that solving larger problems starts with addressing the root causes that may be keeping an individual from reaching their fullest potential. Besides helping local students access better living conditions, she started a community computer literacy program to educate older citizens. She worked with a local food bank and started Opal’s Farm, an urban farming project in her community, to reduce food insecurity and provide work for formerly incarcerated people. 

“It’s always around helping and bettering people,” said Sims. “It was the way she was brought up. My great-grandpa, her grandfather, was a living example of being your brother’s keeper. You help people. In that day and time, that’s how people survived — on the kindness of helping each other.” 

Alongside her other community efforts, Lee has always advocated for national awareness of Juneteenth. In 2016, after walking from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., she delivered a petition with more than 1.5 million signatures to Congress that resulted in Juneteenth being recognized as a federal holiday in 2021. 

Lee continues to host and encourage 2.5-mile walks in communities every year to commemorate Juneteenth. She has been a central advocate for the newly founded National Juneteenth Museum expected to open in 2026. 

After so many years of dedication to her community, it’s only fitting that the community is giving back by rebuilding her long-lost home. 

Volunteers from Habitat for Humanity have been hard at work rebuilding Lee’s home on the same site where it stood in 1939. Besides picking out color schemes, Lee is leaving the decor and furnishings up to the volunteers. 

“It will totally be a surprise when she walks in,” Sims said. “She’s totally excited.” 

The house is more than an act of thanks: It’s a testament to Lee’s example of looking for bright spots and solutions, even in the worst of times. 

“You come full circle,” Sims said. “What could have scarred her at 12 years old or caused her to hate white people and to isolate, it’s now being restored to her. You can now see good come out of something bad that happened. You can still be in a moment where something horrific happened to an individual, and if you were to do a time travel jump from 1939 to 2024, that same place that was destroyed now has a beautiful home on it. The young girl who had to leave under cover of darkness can now be in the light, living on that land.” 

At almost 100 years old, Lee continues working to progress human dignity in her community. In doing so, she demonstrates that civil rights are far from a history lesson: They’re part of an ongoing effort, one that we can all play a role in advancing. 

“We want folks to not just see Juneteenth as a past observance because Juneteenth is about freedom, and freedom is 365 days a year,” Sims said. “Every day, we have to [promote] the cause of ensuring that freedom thrives.”

Part of this, Sims said, is embracing a broader definition of freedom itself and understanding it as any aspect of life that allows an individual to pursue their fullest potential.  

“People always think civil rights only have to do with race,” Sims said. “Civil rights have to do with a person being able to be all that they can be. If the opportunities aren’t there, then their civil rights are not being completely fulfilled. We have to take out the connotation of just thinking about the ‘60s.”

Instead, both Sims and Lee believe that modern-day civil rights have much more to do with ensuring that all individuals are empowered with equal opportunities to flourish. 

Civil rights, both say, are not simply a matter of slavery or segregation. Instead, the concept goes back to how much each individual is uplifted and given the chance to thrive — the same principles the country was founded on centuries ago. 

“Juneteenth comes out of that passion because now it’s about understanding how the impacts of slavery impacted people,” Sims said. “It goes back to, how does the person sustain? What do they need to have a better life? Juneteenth becomes more encompassing than just freedom from slavery. It’s loosening those bounds that have been oppressed upon a people, that keep them from being all that they can be.”