Plans Move Forward for the National Juneteenth Museum
Officials overseeing the project aim for it to open in time for the holiday in 2024.
The museum, which will be located at the corner of Rosedale Street and Evans Avenue in Fort Worth, TX, will revitalize the surrounding area, which went into decline in the 1960s, after being divided by the I-35W highway.
The development will include a business incubator to promote Black entrepreneurship, a food hall featuring culturally Black cuisine from local vendors, a flexible performance space and a theater.
The museum has so far been funded by private donations from individuals, corporations and foundations; it is also seeking government support. The goal is to offer free admission, underwritten by fund-raising and by the revenue-generating aspects of the mixed-use development.
Although Galveston is the Texas location most connected with Juneteenth, “the national narrative is one we hope to focus on,” said Dione Sims, who is Lee’s granddaughter and the museum’s founding executive director.
The museum will tell a broad story of emancipation, highlighting allies like the Quakers, who helped shepherd people to freedom in the North; white and Black abolitionist societies; the southern Underground Railroad into Mexico; and figures like Sam Houston, who, as president of the Republic of Texas in 1837, outlawed the illegal importation of slaves into Texas.
For nearly 20 years, Opal Lee has operated a modest Juneteenth Museum in a property on Rosedale Street. “You cannot talk about the history of the country too much,” she said. “You cannot talk too much about what is still pervasive in our culture, in our national narrative, that is affecting so many lives today: systemic racism rooted in slavery. The freedom from slavery, or the emancipation of the human spirit, is what we’re going to help elevate.”
Thirty-three members of Congress have signed a letter nominating Opal Lee, the Fort Worth resident known as the “grandmother of Juneteenth,” for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. The laureates will be announced in October 2022.
