Still Walking ...

— A WEEKLY NOTE FROM LEAH DAUGHTRY —

Black

Lady

News

What matters this week.
For the women who move the world.

Issue No. 008

Friday, June 19, 2026 · Juneteenth

Still walking.

A NOTE FROM LEAH

This morning, while you read this, Opal Lee is walking. She is 99 years old, and she is walking 2.5 miles through Fort Worth the way she has every Juneteenth for a decade — one half-mile for each of the two and a half years that freedom was real on paper and withheld in fact. That is the whole story of this day. The news of freedom came late. People had to go and get it.

So Happy Juneteenth. To the freed and the still-freeing. To everybody who ever had to walk toward something that should have been handed to them.

Let me be honest with you about the week, because the day deserves honesty more than it deserves a card. Freedom is being narrowed again — in courtrooms, on maps, at the highest address in the land. And freedom is also being claimed again, by Black women, out loud, on ballots, this very week. Both are true. I am not going to make you choose between the grief and the glory. Juneteenth never did.

So here is what is inside. We profile Opal Lee — faith plus action, in her own words, in her 100th year. We track Callais across the South, and tell you where the wall fell and where, against the odds, it held. We count a Tuesday when Black women won up and down the ballot. We name what was said about Michelle Obama at the people’s house, and the silence that answered it. And we tell you what is in the braiding hair, because somebody should.

We also owe you a correction, and we don’t do that quietly. It’s right below.

Forward it to your group chat. Pull a stat for your next meeting. And somewhere today, if you can, walk a little.

Let’s get into it.

A CORRECTION

In Issue 007, our profile of Adrienne Adams described her as facing a Democratic primary on June 23. That was wrong. Because the Hochul–Adams ticket is unopposed for the Democratic nomination, there is no primary contest — the ticket advances directly to the November 3 general election, where it faces Republican Bruce Blakeman. The stakes we named still stand: if they win, Adams would be the first Black woman Lieutenant Governor of New York, on the first all-woman major-party ticket in state history. We got the mechanics wrong. We don’t do that quietly. — LD

THE HEADLINE

Juneteenth’s unfinished business: the promise was always three parts

Freedom, citizenship, the vote — the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Juneteenth is the first one. Two of the three are under attack at once.

One hundred sixty-one years ago today, a Union general stood in Galveston, Texas, and read an order announcing that the enslaved people of Texas were free. It was June 19, 1865. The Emancipation Proclamation had been law for two and a half years. The freedom existed the whole time. What was missing was enforcement — somebody with the power and the will to make the promise real on the ground.

That is the thing to hold onto this morning, because it is the thing that keeps repeating. Freedom on paper is not freedom in fact. The distance between the two is measured in who shows up to enforce it — and who shows up to narrow it.

Freedom, citizenship, the vote

Juneteenth marks the 13th Amendment — the end of slavery. But the people who built Reconstruction understood that freedom alone was a house with no walls. So they wrote two more amendments. The 14th, in 1868, made the formerly enslaved citizens: all persons born here, it says, are citizens here. The 15th, in 1870, said that citizenship came with a vote that could not be denied on account of race. Freedom, citizenship, the vote. Three parts of one promise. You needed all three, or you had none of them. In 2026, two of the three are being unwound at the same time.

The 15th: the vote

Seven weeks ago, in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — the enforcement muscle behind the 15th Amendment. Within days, the South began redrawing its maps. Louisiana erased one of its two Black-majority districts. Tennessee carved up Memphis. Florida passed new lines the same day the ruling came down. The vote, narrowed — not by repealing the right, but by rearranging the lines until the right doesn’t add up to power. (Where it held and where it didn’t is in Tracking Callais, below.)

The 14th: citizenship

And now the 14th. The Supreme Court is weighing Trump v. Barbara, a challenge to birthright citizenship itself — the plain words of the Citizenship Clause that made Juneteenth’s freedmen into Americans. The administration argues those words don’t mean what they have meant for over 157 years. The justices seemed skeptical at argument, and a ruling is expected within weeks. But understand the stakes of the question even being open: the same clause that turned formerly enslaved people into citizens is the clause now on the table. For Black immigrant women — Haitian, Nigerian, Jamaican, Somali, building families and futures here — it is not abstract. It is whether their children are born citizens or born contested.

Freedom without citizenship is charity.
Citizenship without the vote is decoration.
The promise was always three parts. They are coming for two of them.

And lest it feel far away: this week a Black woman won the Democratic primary to be mayor of the capital of the United States — and the President said that if she takes office, he will take the city from her and run it himself. Self-rule, made conditional. The franchise narrowed not by the ballot but by what is allowed to happen after it. (More in The Five, below.)

WHY THIS MATTERS FOR US

Black women have always been the ones who closed the distance between freedom on paper and freedom in fact. We registered the voters. We ran for the seats. We filed the suits, raised the children, and walked the 2.5 miles. The three-part promise of Reconstruction was never self-enforcing — it was carried, every inch, on the backs of people who refused to accept the paper version. That is the assignment again. When the courts narrow the vote and question the citizenship, the work falls where it has always fallen: on us. The good news, the Juneteenth news, is that we already know how to do this. We have done it for 161 years. The news came late before, too. We went and got it.

READ MORE. SCOTUSblog · AP · NMAAHC on Juneteenth.

THE PROFILE

Still walking: Opal Lee, in her 100th year

If the Headline is what it looks like when freedom is narrowed by the courts, the Profile is what it looks like when one woman widens it by hand — 2.5 miles at a time.

WHO  Opal Lee

WHAT  The Grandmother of Juneteenth; new memoir, A Committee of One

WHEN  Leads Opal’s Walk for Freedom, Fort Worth — this morning

MILESTONE  In her 100th year (born October 7, 1926)

This morning, while you read this, a 99-year-old woman is walking 2.5 miles through Fort Worth’s cultural district. The walk steps off at 9 a.m. from Will Rogers Square. She has done some version of it every Juneteenth for a decade. The distance is not arbitrary: it marks the two and a half years that passed between the Emancipation Proclamation and the day the news — and the enforcement — finally reached the enslaved people of Texas. Freedom, delayed. Then walked into being.

Before you read another word about her honors, you should know the day she comes from.

The fire, and the day she kept anyway

Opal Flake was born in Marshall, Texas, on October 7, 1926, the oldest of three. Her great-grandmother was born into slavery — Opal is three generations removed from the thing Juneteenth marks the end of. The family moved to Fort Worth when she was 10.

Then June 19, 1939. Her parents had just bought a house on East Annie Street, in a mostly white area. On Juneteenth, a mob of some 500 white rioters vandalized and burned it down. Opal was twelve. No one was ever arrested. Sit with the cruelty of the date. They chose the holiday. They wanted the celebration of freedom to share the calendar with terror.

She could have spent the rest of her life giving that day back to the people who tried to take it. She did the opposite. She made June 19 her life’s work and the country’s holiday.

What she actually did

She graduated high school at 16, earned a bachelor’s in elementary education and a master’s in counseling, and spent some 24 years teaching and counseling children in Fort Worth schools before retiring in 1977. Then she got to work on her community — a food bank, a farm, a garden. And then, at an age when most people are being driven to appointments, she started walking. In 2016, at 89, Opal Lee walked a symbolic 1,400 miles from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., to push for Juneteenth to be made a federal holiday. On June 17, 2021, she stood in the room as President Biden signed it into law — the eleventh federal holiday. In 2022, 34 members of Congress nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize. In May 2024, she returned to the White House to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. When she was nominated for the Nobel, she said the thing that has become her whole theology: “You got to help people if you can. And I can. I still can.”

The book, this week

This is why she is our Profile this particular week. On June 2, Lee released A Committee of One: How Faith + Action = A PurposeFULL Life, a memoir the publisher likens to Tuesdays with Morrie. It does not flinch — she writes about the 1939 mob and the end of her first marriage as the ground her resilience grew in. The title is the argument. Faith plus action. Not faith instead of action, and not action without something underneath it.

WHY THIS MATTERS FOR US — ESPECIALLY THIS WEEK

The Headline is about a Court narrowing the franchise 161 years after Galveston. The Profile is the rebuttal in the same breath. Opal Lee did not wait for permission, a coalition, or a comfortable age to move the country. She walked. One woman, a committee of one, against a date that was supposed to break her — and she turned it into a national holiday. In a week when the news asks whether freedom is being rolled back, she is the standing answer to what one Black woman, refusing to sit down, can still do. She is 99 and she is walking this morning. The question she leaves us is not whether the work is hard. It is whether we will lace up.

THE FIVE

What we are watching this week.

TRACKING CALLAIS · SEVEN WEEKS LATER

Where the map wars stand

Georgia — Held, and not quietly. Gov. Kemp called a June 17 special session to redraw congressional and legislative maps for 2028. It collapsed on opening day: both chambers’ Republican leaders refused, citing pending litigation and the need to slow down — as the Capitol filled with chants of “Black voters matter!” and a Pilgrimage for Voting Rights marched down Auburn Avenue. Democrats claimed it as a win earned through weeks of pressure. A reprieve, not a resolution — but the wave broke here.

Louisiana — Enacted. Gov. Landry signed a new congressional map May 29 that dismantles one of two Black-majority districts — Cleo Fields’s 6th — pushing toward 5-1 Republican. The first Black-held seat erased since Callais. Litigation expected.

Tennessee — Enacted. The new map carves up Memphis to eliminate Rep. Steve Cohen’s seat.

Florida — Enacted. Lawmakers passed a new map the day Callais came down — worth roughly four Republican seats.

Alabama — Blocked, on appeal. A federal panel blocked the state’s map as “tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.” The state is appealing to the Supreme Court. The least settled square on the board.

South Carolina — Held. The state Senate voted 24-20 against advancing a new map; Jim Clyburn’s 6th survives. Republican holdouts stopped it.

Mississippi — Pressing. GOP leaders are pushing to redraw the lone Democratic seat. No map has cleared.

Virginia — Blocked. The state Supreme Court ruled the Democratic-led legislature skipped the constitutional process required to redraw the lines.

Two states fell hard this stretch — and two held. The lines move, the litigation moves, the organizing moves. We are still counting.

THE THROUGH-LINE

At the people’s house, a slur. From the White House, silence.

Sunday night, the UFC staged a fight on the South Lawn of the White House — Freedom 250, thrown for the President’s 80th birthday. After his win, heavyweight Josh Hokit took the microphone from Joe Rogan, turned to the crowd, and said Michelle Obama “is a man.” An old, racist, transphobic lie about a woman who once lived in that house. The President sat in the front row. Moments later, Hokit draped a chain around his neck. Rogan moved on. The broadcast never came back to it.

As we publish, the White House has said nothing about it. The President posted overnight that the event was “incredible” and the White House “never looked more beautiful” — he found words for the night. Just not for what was said on his lawn.

Sit with what that silence is. When a man stands in your yard, at your party, on your birthday, with you in the front row, and degrades a Black woman — and you say nothing — the nothing is the answer. Silence in your own home is not neutrality. It is permission.

And the silence stands out, because nearly everyone else spoke. The fight’s own promoter found words — Dana White called the remark “nasty and false.” A Democratic senator found words. So did a Republican one. The fighter himself doubled down and refused to take it back. The only address that went quiet was the one he said it at.

Call them by their names. Josh Hokit said it. Joe Rogan let it stand. The house that could have answered chose not to. — LD

THE THROUGH-LINE

The capital, on the line.

On Tuesday, Washington, D.C. held its first open mayoral primary in over a decade — Muriel Bowser, after three terms, chose not to run — and its first ever using ranked-choice voting. The two who mattered were former council colleagues: Janeese Lewis George, the Ward 4 councilmember and self-described democratic socialist, and Kenyan McDuffie, the centrist backed by Bowser’s coalition.

As of publish, McDuffie has conceded; Lewis George leads with roughly 53% to his 37% and is the Democratic nominee — all but certain to be D.C.’s next mayor. The ranked-choice count is still being certified, but the contest is decided.

Here is what makes it bigger than one city: a Black woman is set to run the capital of the United States — and the President said that if she does, he would “take back Washington and run it on the federal basis. We won’t put up with it.” He named the threat before the votes were even counted.

Sit with the timing. We mark Juneteenth this morning — a holiday about a freedom withheld for two and a half years. And here is a city of nearly 700,000, the original Chocolate City, that still does not fully govern itself — now told its choice of mayor may not be allowed to stand. On her election night, Lewis George told supporters, “The dream of America is still alive in its capital city.”

We are watching the certification finish — and watching whether the winner is allowed to govern.

THE WIN

Tuesday belonged to Black women.

Some weeks the Win is a verdict. Some weeks a record. This week it is a ballot — and the Black women who ran the table on it.

In Georgia, Black women won Democratic nominations up and down the ballot. Among them: Penny Brown Reynolds — former judge, minister, small-business owner — for Secretary of State; Ceretta Smith, an Army veteran and union member, in the 12th District; and Amanda Hollowell, out of a crowded field, in the 1st.

Think about that Secretary of State race in particular. The office Stacey Abrams once accused of being weaponized against her. The office Brad Raffensperger held when he refused a president’s phone call. A Black woman is now one election away from sitting in that chair and running the thing clean. In Georgia. In 2026.

More than a million Georgians turned out for a runoff — the kind of number that does not happen by accident. It happens because people built it, door by door, church by church, for years. And those are only the names that fit here. There were more.

THE WATCH

What we are watching next.

Dates worth circling. One of them is Tuesday.

This week — Georgia. Republican lawmakers declined to redraw the state’s maps in the June 17 special session — a setback for Kemp and Trump, won under heavy pressure. The maps can still be redrawn before 2028 through the regular process. We are watching whether the push resurfaces.

Tue, June 23 — the Third Circuit. Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) goes before the U.S. Court of Appeals to argue that the felony charges against her — for a congressional oversight visit to a Newark ICE facility — should be thrown out. It is the Trump administration’s first criminal prosecution of a sitting member of Congress; she calls it political retaliation and notes January 6 defendants who faced the same charge were pardoned. A test of whether oversight is protected.

Late June / early July — the Supreme Court. A ruling on birthright citizenship in Trump v. Barbara is expected before the term ends. The stakes run through the 14th Amendment and through Black immigrant women building families here. We run it the Friday it lands.

Watch closely — Alabama. A federal panel blocked the state’s congressional map as intentional race discrimination; the AG is appealing to the Supreme Court. The fastest-moving square on the redistricting board.

Tue, Aug 4 — Virginia. The primary (U.S. House). Early voting opens June 19 — Juneteenth itself. The franchise narrowing in the sidebar; the box opening here, on the same morning. Circle both.

Ongoing — the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Still stalled in the Senate. Still the answer to half of this issue.

WHERE TO BE

When we fight, we win.

Freedom Summer 2026 opens its Juneteenth Week of Action — and if you are anywhere near New York, there is a place to be the day after this lands. Bring your people.

Freedom Summer · Juneteenth Week of Action

Saturday, June 20, 2026 · 1:00 p.m.

Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. State Office Building Plaza
163 West 125th Street, Harlem, New York

Powered by the All Roads Lead To The South Coalition

freedomsummer2026.com

ONE THING TO READ

For your weekend: what is in the hair.

This week’s recommendation is a watch first, then a read. NBC News’ Zinhle Essamuah sat down with the researchers behind two new investigations into the chemicals turning up in braiding hair and extensions — the kind marketed, overwhelmingly, to us. Hear the reporting in their own words, then go to the source.

Watch: New studies warn of health risks in hair extensions often marketed to Black women — NBC News.

Then read the two reports behind it:

Silent Spring Institute, led by Dr. Elissia Franklin, in the American Chemical Society journal Environment & Health: 43 synthetic and human-hair products tested, 169 chemicals found, roughly nine in ten samples carrying a chemical linked to cancer or reproductive harm. Summary at silentspring.org; the open-access study at pubs.acs.org.

Consumer Reports, which tested ten popular synthetic braiding brands and found carcinogens in all of them and lead in nine of ten — and notes there is no federal limit on lead in synthetic braiding hair at all. Findings and their FDA petition at consumerreports.org.

I am not here to tell you what to put in your hair. I am here to tell you that a product sold this hard to Black women, with this little oversight, is worth knowing about. Read it. Forward it to your stylist. Pull a fact for your next standing appointment.

BLACK MUSIC MONTH · WEEK 3

The freedom songs.

Week one we played the new. Week two, the protest. This week, on Juneteenth, we go to the canon — the gospel, soul, and jazz that Black people made to carry themselves toward a freedom that kept arriving late. These are walking songs. Play them this morning while Opal Lee walks.

Mahalia Jackson — “How I Got Over.” The Queen of Gospel sang it at the 1963 March on Washington, in the last slot before Dr. King spoke — and then leaned over and told him to tell the people about the dream.

Aretha Franklin — Amazing Grace (1972). At the height of her secular fame, Aretha went back to church — recording live over two nights in a Watts congregation with Rev. James Cleveland. It became the best-selling gospel album of all time.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe — “Strange Things Happening Every Day.” The godmother of rock and roll: a Black woman with an electric guitar who built the sound that made other people famous. Reclaim the lineage out loud.

Abbey Lincoln & Max Roach — We Insist! Freedom Now Suite (1960). Made in the shadow of the Emancipation centennial and the sit-ins, with Abbey Lincoln’s voice carrying it. Cue “Freedom Day.”

The Staple Singers — “Freedom Highway.” Pops Staples wrote it for the Selma-to-Montgomery march; Mavis took the lead and never put it down. Gospel-soul as marching music. Still walking — the cover line, in a song.

Five voices, one direction. Forward. The full playlist is on our Spotify — link in our Instagram bio, @blackladynews.

Stay rooted.

— LD

Black Lady News is a weekly curation by Leah Daughtry.
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Black Lady News · Issue 008 · June 2026

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