Meet Opal Lee, the 94-year-old activist who marched for miles to make Juneteenth a federal holiday

In 2016, civil rights leader Opal Lee, then 89, laced up her sneakers for the 1,400-mile trek from her home in Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., hoping to ask President Barack Obama to make Juneteenth a national holiday.

But she wasn’t sure she would be let into the White House.

“You could save me a lot of shoe leather and a lot of wear and tear on an old body by saying how soon you can see me,” she wrote to Obama.