After Opal Lee led hundreds in a walk through her Texas hometown to celebrate Juneteenth, the 95-year-old Black woman who helped successfully push for the holiday to get national recognition said it’s important that people learn the history behind it.

“We need to know so people can heal from it and never let it happen again,” said Lee, whose 2 1/2-mile walk through Fort Worth symbolizes the 2 1/2 years it took for enforcement in Texas of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which ended slavery in the Southern states.

A year after U.S. President Joe Biden signed legislation last year making June