#black lives matter

[cyarskj1899]

From IG annabodneydesign

[petervintonjr]

Everybody raise a glass to activist Opal Lee, one of the driving forces behind how we even got a Juneteenth in the first place.

Born Opal Flake in 1926 Texas, her home burned down when she was a small child and the family moved to Fort Worth. In 1939 the family purchased a home in a south side Fort Worth neighborhood --the first Black family to do so, which didn't sit well with some of the neighbors, and after only a few weeks an angry mob burned the house down. Despite these dual childhood traumas, Opal graduated from high school in 1943, and then eventually from Wiley College in 1953. She took a job teaching at an elementary school in Fort Worth, married fellow educator Dale Lee, and ultimately earned a Master's in counseling in 1968, from the North Texas State University (today the University of North Texas). She retired from her career in education in 1977 at the age of 51... and was clearly just getting started.

Beginning with a post-retirement career supervising a local food bank and its adjacent 13-acre farm, expanding it to a 33,000 sq. foot facility that today serves upwards of 500 families a day. More recently she also founded Transform 1012 N. Main Street, a coalition of Fort Worth area nonprofits and arts organizations aiming to reconstruct a former Ku Klux Klan auditorium into the Fred Rouse Arts Center (named for a Black man who was lynched by a Fort Worth mob in 1921). But Lee's greatest passion was always aimed toward preservation of local Black history, leading into the founding of the Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society. It was from this starting point that June 19th began to be more widely acknowledged and celebrated as a yearly event. Each year Lee and other members of the society made a point of walking two and a half miles, symbolically covering the number of years between the formal end of enslavement (i.e., the Emancipation Proclamation) and the time most Texans found out about it.

In 2016, now at the age of 89, Lee took the advice of the society to "go bigger," and walked from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C. (a distance of roughly 1,360 miles), taking more than five months to complete and collecting enthusiastic signatures along the way, in support of the premise of at last elevating Juneteenth to the status of a national holiday. On June 17, 2021, Lee was present at the White House when then-President Joe Biden signed the bill officially marking Juneteenth as an annual federal holiday. Today Lee is the oldest living member of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation (NJOF), and is both a board member --and Honorary Chair-- of the National Juneteenth Museum. She was named by the Dallas Morning News as 2021's "Unsung Hero of the Pandemic," has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and in 2024 received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

This past year, Habitat For Humanity built and gifted Opal a new house on the very Fort Worth lot where a racist mob burned down her family's home 85 years prior.

[reverence4blackmen]

[vividdreamer]

Please consider donating and sharing the GoFundMe to support Adriana Smith's family.

For those of you who aren't aware, Adriana Smith was taken off life support (June 17) after a C-section was administered to prematurely birth her child on June 13. The baby is alive and being monitored in the NICU. Her family will finally be able to bury their daughter.

Rest in power Adriana Smith.

[the-blueprint]

@Wisdom

[robinsversion]

RIP Adriana Smith, and fuck the people who forced her on life support, and fuck Georgia lawmakers while we’re at it

[correllian]

[grady-lee]

Happy Juneteenth

(Video shows an Alice Walker interview and my grandpa’s photos from the Korean War)

[blackisdivine]

[indigokra]

RESIST antiblackness

REVOLT against empire

REMATRIATE the land

This Juneteenth I wanted to explore what African-American liberation would look like on Turtle Island beyond reparations. I took inspiration from my Gullah-Geechee ancestors who maintained their indigenous African lifeways and culture in the face of chattel slavery and cultural genocide.

This painting includes a character of mine who I lovingly refer to as Sister Liberation. She represents a continuum of Black women’s militant resistance against misogynoir and colonialism outside of motherhood. I call her Sister Liberation because she “ain’t nobody’s mama”.

Pictured here is Sister Liberation adorned with cowrie shell jewelry and her signature rifle (adorned with the Akan Adinkra symbols for justice, freedom, and wisdom from the past). In her left hand, she holds stalks of wild rice. In front of her, a Gullah-Geechee sweetgrass basket is adorned with Aya, the Adinkra symbol for survival and endurance. The basket is filled with indigo leaves and okra.

Prints and posters of this piece are now available on my redbubble!

[saddayfordemocracy]

Happy Juneteenth !

"Celebrate, Educate, and to agitate."

[brianshares]

I did feel the need to do something tangibly beneficial for Juneteenth. I ran a search for Black-owned businesses, found a restaurant within a reasonable driving distance, and spent money there at lunchtime. I might actually go back to that restaurant in the near future.

It's Juneteenth yall. And I'm not letting this day go unmarked.

Black people fight for everybody. We stand in solidarity with women, lgbt people, poor people all over the world of every skin color and background. Every religion and nationality.

Today, stand with us. Be with us. Tell a black person you love them. Hug a black person (with consent). Ask that hot black girl out today. Make a black person smile. Black lives matter to everybody and you matter to us.

Stand with us on Juneteenth like we stand with you all year round, and I hope a happy Pride month continues for all of us

💝

[thashining]

Apparently they need a good night's sleep.....tf

[padawan-historian]

As we keep the Juneteenth energy flowing throughout the month, let’s center our histories and learnings around the hearths of the many Black women and queer folks who have woven the memories, miracles, and magic of our futurepast into their good work and good trouble as scholars and storytellers.

Quilted artworks by Stephen Towns

* A Black Women's History of the United States // Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross (2020)

* Black Women Taught Us: An Intimate History of Black Feminism // Jenn Jackson (2024)

* We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance // Kellie Carter Jackson (2024)

* Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All // Martha Jones (2020)

* Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class // Blair Kelley (2023)

* A Black Queer History of the United States // C. Riley Snorton and Darius Bost (2026)

* Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner's Community // Vanessa Holden (2021)

* Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People // Tiya Miles (2024)

* Brooding over Bloody Revenge: Enslaved Women’s Lethal Resistance // Nikki Taylor (2023)

* Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century // Tera Hunter(2017)

* The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation // Anna Malaika Tubbs (2023)

* Riding Jane Crow: African American Women on the American Railroad // Miriam Thaggert (2022)

Curated by @Rosecolored_Scholar Find these works on my Cite Black Women booklist series: https://bookshop.org/shop/neighborhoodhistorian

[soulcialdent]

✊🏾✊🏾✊🏽

happy Juneteenth to black fans in fandom specifically 🫶🏿 love yall