85 years after a racist mob drove Opal Lee's family away, she's getting a new home on the same spot
When Opal Lee was 12, a racist mob drove her family out of their Texas home. Now, the 97-year-old community activist is getting closer to moving into a brand new home on the very same tree-lined corner lot in Fort Worth.
This June 19 will also be the 85th anniversary of the day a mob, angered that a Black family had moved in, began gathering outside the home her parents had just bought. As the crowd grew, her parents sent her and her siblings to a friend’s house several blocks away and then eventually left themselves.
In recent years though, she began thinking of trying to get the lot back. After learning that Trinity Habitat for Humanity had bought the land, Lee called its CEO and her longtime friend, Gage Yager.
After he made sure the lot was not already promised to another family, he called Lee and told her it would be hers for $10. He said at the wall-raising ceremony that it was heartening to see a mob of people full of love gathered in the place where a mob full of hatred had once gathered.
