
As the U.S. has experienced protests over the cause of civil rights for people of color for the past two months, the call to designate Juneteenth (June 19) as a national holiday has gained steam. But for one person, in particular, the campaign for a national commemorative day when slaves in Texas finally learned about their emancipation in 1865, has been ongoing for several years.
Miss Opal Lee, a 93-year old resident of Ft. Worth, Texas, has a long history of community outreach, and in 2016 decided to walk from Ft. Worth to Washington, D.C. (at 2.5 miles per day to represent the 2.5 years it took for news of the emancipation to reach Texas), gathering signatures along the way to present a petition to Congress designating Juneteenth as a national holiday.
It was a modest beginning for the first several years until recently when the nation reacted in horror to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, sparking weeks of protests. Attention became focused on Juneteenth, prompting a renewed call among many of the nation's leaders to designate it a national holiday.
Attention also turned to the 93-year old lady from Ft. Worth who had been advocating this cause with her march and petition.
We started out talking about 100,000 signatures and now we're saying let's take a million signatures to Congress to let them know that it's not just one little old lady in tennis shoes, she told the New York Times last month.
With COVID-19 shutting down much of daily life, the 2020 version of the annual march now designated as phase 2 of Miss Opal's walk was in danger of not taking place, according to Doug Johnston, founder and CEO of Artistic Visual Studios (AVS), a Dallas-based production company.
We couldnt do a march because of the [health] requirements with the city, he said. So we put a caravan together with people in cars following her as she walked. We had the city of Fort Worth mayor and the chief of police for the city of Fort Worth.
Now there are plans to expand this caravan into a march from Ft. Worth to Washington, D.C., this fall, starting in late August with the intention of submitting a petition with at least a minimum of one million signatures by early November to Congress to designate Juneteenth a national holiday.
AVS had been working with Miss Opal on the project before the protests and managed to gain the attention of Nike, which is sponsoring the caravan, and in addition, provided the wardrobe for a promotional video.
Whether or not legislation will pass anytime soon on the holiday designation, Johnston feels that the opportunity is there to promote the cause through unique storytelling.
We want to create awareness about the situation that [the bill] still hasnt passed yet, and then also basically to create that awareness, education all the way through that caravan, he said. So its more of an educational thing to bring awareness to people that dont know about Juneteenth, and for her to pop into each city, talk to the news outlets.
The live broadcast will be available on Ms. Opal's Facebook page (opalswalk2dc) and on local radio station 97.9 The Beat - Urban One | RL (www.thebeatdfw.com).
To cover the event, AVS is using Dejero's GateWay, WayPoint, CuePoint, EnGo and LivePlus app for reliable connectivity and high quality live video transmission.
AVS crew prepares for their live production using Dejero solutions (Image credit: AVS) Dejero's solutions have opened up a new world of opportunity for us, Johnston said. They've allowed us to cut the cords of the constraints we've experienced with limited connectivity. Now, whether we're in the studio, a fixed venue and especially on location, we can be so much more agile get even closer to the action, provide more vantage points and interviews on the move and most importantly, deliver enterprise level, crisp quality live productions for future multicultural events in a way that hasn't been delivered before.
Four Dejero EnGo mobile transmitters will serve AVS camera operators strategically positioned in the field as they broadcast live from the crowds and conduct interviews with supporters as they march. The Dejero LivePlus mobile app will also be accessible to further AVS crews on the ground via their smartphones, capturing multiple viewpoints to document the excitement and passion of the campaigners. Additionally, using the LivePlus mobile app on a smartphone, mounted on a selfie stick, will allow AVS to deliver exclusive live footage of Ms. Opal herself, up close, as she walks from the Fort Worth Convention Center to the Will Rogers Auditorium.
Using Smart Blending Technology, which aggregates diverse network technologies from multiple network operators, the Dejero EnGo dynamically and intelligently manages fluctuating bandwidth, packet loss and latency differences in real-time, meaning AVS will not need to be concerned with congested local cellular networks or any signal degradation to achieve the connectivity required for this quality live broadcast coverage.
A Dejero WayPoint receiver will provide AVS with the ability to switch between four simultaneous feeds from its studio in Dallas and reconstruct the video transported over multiple IP connections from the Dejero transmitters, decode HEVC and AVC, and output to SDI.
We're proud as a company to offer our clients, and the causes we support, a unique story-telling production service that truly captures the tone, atmosphere and sincerity of their stories in an intimate and impactful way, continued Johnston.
The technology that Dejero has provided will amplify our offering by helping us to deliver even richer content, especially in live and remote production situations; starting with Ms. Opal's walk , added Russell Lopez, business development at Artistic Visual Studios.
To enable AVS camera
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
14/05/2026
Sweetwater and Airstream have announced a custom-built Dolby Atmos mobile recording studio inside an Airstream trailer, set to tour music festivals, schools, tr...
14/05/2026
The American Association of Professional Baseball (AAPB) has announced a new par...
14/05/2026
ESPN has announced plans to transform Santa Monica Beach into a broadcast hub du...
14/05/2026
Amagi has announced a significant update to Amagi CLOUDPORT, its cloud-based broadcast playout platform. The update includes 250-plus features shipped in FY25-2...
14/05/2026
Clear-Com will exhibit at InfoComm 2026 (Booth N7005, June 17-19, Las Vegas Convention Center), introducing a new product that builds on Arcadia Central Station...
14/05/2026
Ikegami will exhibit at BroadcastAsia 2026 (Stand 5D3-1, Singapore Expo, May 20-22), introducing two new viewfinders alongside its existing camera, control, and...
14/05/2026
Grass Valley has announced that dB Broadcast has delivered new IP-based outside ...
14/05/2026
NAGRAVISION, a Kudelski Group company, has announced a partnership with the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) to launch Play Snooker,...
14/05/2026
Belden Inc. has announced a definitive agreement to acquire RUCKUS Networks from Vistance Networks for approximately $1.85 billion. The transaction has been app...
14/05/2026
NVIDIA has released the Content Localization Blueprint, a modular reference arch...
14/05/2026
Disney has announced that Disney will be the exclusive U.S. streaming home of the Banana Bowl, the Banana Ball league season championship, streaming live this ...
14/05/2026
Arkona technologies and technology partner manifold will demonstrate their production solutions on the Magna Systems and Engineering stand (Booth 5D1-1) at Broa...
14/05/2026
Haivision will host a webinar on Thursday, May 21 at 10 a.m. ET / 4 p.m. CET cov...
14/05/2026
The CW Network and ESPN have announced a sublicense broadcast agreement for The CW to televise ACC football and men's and women's college basketball gam...
14/05/2026
The agreement marks Scripps Sports' first NBA local rights deal...
14/05/2026
A new report from education-technology company Wiingy testing post-ChatGPT predictions against three years of real-world data has identified broadcasting as one...
14/05/2026
Global Citizen and FIFA have announced that Madonna, Shakira, and BTS will headl...
14/05/2026
LOS ANGELES, CA, May 14, 2026 - The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the cohort selected for the 2026 Episodic Lab program, taking place at Dunaway ...
14/05/2026
At Spotify, we're focused on making every listening experience feel intentio...
14/05/2026
Spotify recently welcomed songwriters, artists, executives, and music students t...
14/05/2026
New articulations, ostinatos, Motion Scoring Articulation Sets & more
Sonuscore's flagship cinematic string library has just been treated to a significa...
14/05/2026
World-class studio opens on T rkiye's Aegean coast
P r Recording & Residence have announced their official opening, introducing a new world-class reside...
14/05/2026
Now supports channel layouts up to 9.1.6
Nugen Audio have just released an update for their AI-powered dialogue intelligibility and compliance tool. Set to ...
14/05/2026
New recordings & one-key chord tool
UVI have just announced the release of Orchestral Suite 2, a ground-up redesign of their all-in-one symphonic orchestra ...
14/05/2026
Two new arrivals & expanded factory content
Rob Papen's all-encompassing plug-in and virtual instrument collection has just been treated to another upda...
14/05/2026
Embed QR codes into DAW sessions
FSK Audio's latest plug-in doesn't process audio, but serves as an organisational tool that allows QR codes to be e...
14/05/2026
SBS Board appoints Jane Palfreyman Managing Director
13 May, 2026
Media releases
The Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) Board of Directors is pleased to an...
14/05/2026
Transforming bold ideas into market-ready productions: Digital Originals returns
14 May, 2026
Media releases
SBS, NITV and Screen Australia have announced ...
14/05/2026
Australia Uncovered Returns to SBS with Bold New Season Featuring John Safran on...
14/05/2026
Rohde & Schwarz transforms spectrum complexity into situational awareness and ef...
14/05/2026
Rohde & Schwarz and Quantum Systems join forces to redefine EW and C-UAS-enabled...
14/05/2026
Rohde & Schwarz showcases STANAG aligned ARDRONIS Counter UAS capability at NATO...
14/05/2026
Code of Silence has won the BAFTA for Best Drama Series at Sunday night's ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall.
The series, starring Rose Ayling-Ellis and w...
14/05/2026
Soldiers equipped with Falcon IV radios will soon gain a sense-and-protect capa...
14/05/2026
Artists concept of the L3Harris Next Gen RTG in flight configuration, designed to provide 250 watts of reliable power for decades-long missions in deep space....
14/05/2026
Vivid Broadcast was embracing remote production long before it became the industry norm. Now, with Calrec's True Control 2.0-enabled Argo M and Type R conso...
14/05/2026
Car ad spend rises sharply in March as more auto buyers turn to electric, hybrid...
14/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
14/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
14/05/2026
CueScript's CueiT 4.0 Wins Future's Best of Show Award, Presented at 2026 NAB Show by TV Tech
CueScript, a leading international developer of professio...
14/05/2026
Expert-Led Education Sessions and Development of Online Training Program Accelerate IPMX Adoption and Deployment
The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) to...
14/05/2026
Klvr is launching in the United States with a professional-grade rechargeable battery solution that cuts costs and improves performance across live entertainmen...
14/05/2026
Shooting into the depths of Bedlam with URSA Cine 17K 65
Brie Clayton May 14, 2026
0 Comments
Indie feature film paired digital 65mm capture with a Bl...
14/05/2026
WeMakeColor expands with Baselight, becoming hybrid color facility
Caroline Shawley May 14, 2026
0 Comments
Boutique Mexican-based studio integrates B...
14/05/2026
Berklee's Summer in the City Returns with Free Concerts Throughout Boston Ar...
14/05/2026
Chelsey Green Named to Billboard's 2026 Women in Music List The Berklee professor and chair of the Recording Academy Board of Trustees joins other high-pr...