Opal Lee hadn’t seen inside her new home Friday morning in Fort Worth as she rocked in a white chair on the front porch.

The Grandmother of Juneteenth — who lost her house on the same lot to a racist mob 85 years ago — smiled as she took the key to the 1,700-square-feet, three-bedroom gray house, paid for by the community.

“Just know I love every one of you,” said Lee, 97, to the admirers, friends and family gathered to see her reclaim her family’s land. “I’m your grandmother, sometimes by another mother.”

Lee’s homecoming Friday crowded the small block on Annie Street. Journalists knelt in the fresh sod in the front yard. She held court from the rocking chair on her front porch.

A Girl Scout troop gifted her cookies and a small anthurium plant. Texas Capital Bank donated the furniture for the home, including a framed photo of the ceremonial wall-raising from March.

JCPenney donated small kitchen appliances, dinnerware, and home décor for her kitchen and living spaces as well as all linens for the bedrooms and bathrooms.

Trinity Habitat for Humanity CEO Gage Yagar gave Lee a new black Bible. The Rev. Walter McDonald, pastor at Lee’s longtime congregation of Baker Chapel AME Church, prayed for blessings over her home.

“We pray that this home will be a home of happiness, of hopefulness, of health that all who reside therein may abide in joy and peace,” McDonald said.

Renée Toliver, Lee’s granddaughter and a federal magistrate judge, chronicled the family’s history, including moving to Annie Street in 1939.

“... In the midst of so-called white flight from the inner cities, unscrupulous realtors lied about whether it was acceptable for Blacks to move into certain neighborhoods,” Toliver said. “And that was because they wanted to sell those homes from which the whites had fled. Unsuspecting Black families… purchased homes to find out afterwards that they were not indeed welcome.”

Lee’s family lived in the home only four days before a hate-filled mob forced them to flee. Her father and mother — Otis and Mattie Flake — never spoke about the incident.

A family dress

Toliver wept recalling a special item buried in the home’s foundation: a white dress with pops of strawberries, worn by Lee’s mother, Mattie.

“When we started to figure out what those mementos would be, my grandmother went to her closet and pulled out one of my great-grandmother’s dresses she had maintained there for all these 30 years to be laid here,” Toliver said through tears. “This is like hallowed ground for me and my family.”

Fort Worth-based HistoryMaker Homes, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary, built Lee’s craftsman home free of charge in just three months, adding special details like a large front porch and tall shade trees on the corner lot.

Lee and her family helped design the home and pick colors of cabinets and flooring. White-shuttered windows hid a room converted into a home library. Orange and purple annuals sat in pots on the porch.

Nelson Mitchell, CEO of HistoryMaker Homes, said his team wrote notes and scriptures of encouragement on the wood framing before workers attached the sheet rock.

Lee hopes the city finds a way to preserve her previous house, located nearby in Fort Worth, as a historical destination. She’s leaving all of her belongings there, she said.

Juneteenth remembrance

In the meantime, she and granddaughter Dionne Sims have their hands full erecting a National Juneteenth Museum.

On June 19, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston, carrying with them the news that enslaved people had been freed. President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation 2½ years prior.

Since then, Juneteenth has long been celebrated in Black communities, including in Marshall, Lee’s hometown in East Texas, bringing people together.

The community has raised about $33 million for the $70 million museum, Lee said, which will open on the corner of Rosedale and Evans in 2026. She plans to travel the country soon to raise more money.

In an interview with The Dallas Morning News Friday morning, Lee said she was delighted and eager to make her new house a home – and introduce herself to the neighborhood.

Lee’s family never got the chance to meet their neighbors in 1939, she said. Soon, she wants to host a house-warming party and invite the neighborhood.

“I want to meet my neighbors, first thing,” Lee said. “I want to do a house-warming, something to invite them in. I want them to know that I’ll make a good neighbor.”

After the speeches and ceremony, Lee took nothing but her blue toothbrush and new key through the front door.

Only friends and family followed her inside as they saw the home for the first time.