Join JuneteenthVA for a staging of Abolitionists’ Museum, presented to honor Ms Opal Lee Day.

Juneteenth-GA’s director Tatitiana Cook, in partnership with the City of Brunswick;  Rejoice 95.7FM’s general manager Eduardo Coleman; Emanuel Baptist Church; and, JuneteenthVA, will host an exciting agenda of “Opal Lee Day” events that will include a meet and greet VIP reception; a parade and festival with vendors and performers; and a dinner theatre performance of the play “Abolitionists’ Museum” by National Juneteenth Observance Foundation board member and award-winning playwright Sheri Bailey.

Ms Lee’s early experiences discrimination growing up in Texas led to a life of of teaching, activism and, eventually, campaigning. In 2016, at the age of 89, she decided to walk from her home in Fort Worth to Washington, DC in an effort to get Juneteenth named a national holiday. She traveled two and a half miles each day to symbolize the two and a half years that Black Texans waited between the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and the day that message was finally conveyed to men, women, and children who were still enslaved in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865.