A portrait of Fort Worth’s Opal Lee—known as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth” for her advocacy of the federal Juneteenth holiday—was unveiled Wednesday in the Texas Senate Chamber in Austin, where it will be permanently displayed.
“Change somebody’s mind because minds can be changed,” 96-year-old Lee told reporters after the ceremony, according to NBC DFW. “If people have been taught to hate they can be taught to love, and it is up to you to do it.”
In September, we wrote that the city of Fort Worth pledged $15 million to advance the planned $70 million National Juneteenth Museum, slated to be built in Fort Worth’s Historic Southside neighborhood:
Fort Worth’s planned National Juneteenth Museum is designed by the New York office of Denmark-based Bjarke Ingels Group. [Rendering courtesy City of Fort Worth]
The museum will get the city funding once the balance for the project has been raised. Designed by the New York office of Denmark-based Bjarke Ingels Group, the building will house the museum on its second level, with a business incubator, restaurant, 250-seat amphitheater, and storefronts at ground level.
“Literally and figuratively, it was designed to be a beacon of light in an area that has been dark for a very long time,” Jarred Howard, principal of the project’s developer, said in September.
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R E A D N E X T
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Slated to be built in Fort Worth's Historic Southside neighborhood, the planned $70 million museum will get the city funding once the balance for the project has been raised. Designed by the New York office of Denmark-based Bjarke Ingels Group, the building will house the museum on its second level, with a business incubator, restaurant, 250-seat amphitheater, and storefronts at ground level. “Literally and figuratively, it was designed to be a beacon of light in an area that has been dark for a very long time,” says Jarred Howard, principal of the project's developer.
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In Fannin County east of Sherman and Denison, Texas's first new major reservoir in almost 30 years is slated to come online next spring. The nearly 17,000-acre Bois d'Arc Lake will be a source of much-needed water for the North Texas Municipal Water District, which serves Frisco, McKinney, Plano, Richardson and other areas of fast-growing northeast Dallas County. “But something just as precious has been created near the lake: a new forest with more than 6 million trees, designed over the last four years as a natural habitat to replace what the lake is swallowing up.
