Opal Lee honored at Academy of Country Music brunch – Spectrum News

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FRISCO, Texas — Some of country music’s best and brightest are two-stepping their way to North Texas this week.
Frisco, a city north of Dallas, is once again hosting the Academy of Country Music Awards this Thursday, and two North Texans are being honored during this year’s festivities.
Fort Worth’s very own Opal Lee, who is known as the Grandmother of Juneteenth, was honored by the ACM for her social justice work at the second annual “I’m Just Me: A Charley Pride Celebration of Inclusion” brunch.
The 98-year-old and her granddaughter said they didn’t see this honor coming.
“I wondered if they made a mistake, cause I’m just a little old lady in tennis shoes getting in everybody’s business, and I’m everybody’s grandma, and I didn’t know what they were making a fuss about. I hardly know how to sing,” Lee said.
Mickey Guyton, a Grammy-nominated country artist who hosted the lunch, couldn’t stop singing Lee’s praises.
“She is such an important person that she should be honored every year. Like they should have the Opal Lee award because she is just so important to us and to the Black community,” Guyton said.
Despite the age gap, Guyton has a few things in common with Lee.
The two North Texans and eight others, including Lionel Richie, Brittney Spencer and Shaboozey, were honored at the brunch.
The event was named after the late Charley Pride, a baseball player and the first Black artist to have a No. 1 country record.
“I would love to see him honored a little bit more because he was really an icon. He loved country music, and he was the first of course Black to sing country music,” Rozene Pride, Pride’s widow, said.
While Pride was blazing the trail and breaking racial barriers in country music in the 1960s, his legacy lives on with the honorees, picked for advancing diversity and inclusion in country music.
“History is so important. And no matter who tries to erase it, it will always be here, no matter whether you like it or not. And this event still happening, I’m so grateful to the ACMs, the Academy of Country Music, for making sure that we still honor Black and brown people regardless of what is going on in our political climate,” Guyton said. “We will never be erased. And so, while the world is trying to do that, we are line dancing, we are resting and celebrating each other.”
The event was held ahead of Thursday night’s 60th annual ACM Awards.

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