Howard Nathaniel Lee made history in 1969 as the first African American to be elected mayor of any majority-white city in the South. Lee was born on July 28, 1934, in Lithonia, Georgia, to sharecroppers Howard Lee and Lou Temple who had six other children.
Lee attended Flat Rock Church School near Lithonia, which was founded by his mother in 1939. He then went to Bruce High School, graduating in 1953. Afterward, he enrolled in Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University) in Atlanta, Georgia. After two years, he transferred to Fort Valley State College (now University) where he pledged Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity and received a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology in 1959. That same year, Lee was drafted into the United States Army and completed basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Selected as a member of the medical corps, Lee received training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and was stationed at Fort Hood. During his off-duty hours, he drove three hours to Houston to participate in sit-ins at the Weingarten’s lunch counter and Madding’s drug store to protest public accommodation discrimination. When his commanding officers found out Lee had participated in the sit-ins, he was reassigned to Camp Casey in Dongducheon, South Korea, for one year. Lee honorably completed his military obligation in 1961. The following year, he married Lillian Wesley, a graduate of Savannah State University. Their children are Angela, Ricky, and Karin.
In 1964, Lee began graduate study at the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC Chapel Hill), as one of two African Americans in a class of forty. The following year, he was elected president of the Student Social Work Association and in 1966 he earned a Master of Social Work degree. From 1966 to 1975, Lee served as an administrator at Duke University and on the faculty at North Carolina Central College (now University).
In 1969, Lee was elected and served three terms as Mayor of Chapel Hill, becoming the first African American to hold this position in a majority-white Southern city since Reconstruction. In 1976, he ran for Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina, narrowly losing in a fiercely contested primary run-off election to James Collins “Jimmy” Green.
From 1977 to 1981, Lee served as Secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and Community Development, a high-ranking position in the Governor Jim Hunt Administration. In 1982, he taught social work classes at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro and from 1982 to 1991, he was faculty at the School of Social Work faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Between 2003 and 2011, Lee served in many capacities in education, including as the Chairperson of the North Carolina State Board of Education and as the first Executive Director of North Carolina Education System.
Lee’s journey, chronicled in his book The Courage to Lead: One Man’s Journey in Public Service (2008) is about growing up as a sharecropper’s son in Georgia and then becoming a successful politician and educator. Lee received honorary degrees from Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina Central University and North Carolina Wesleyan College. In 2024, Howard Nathaniel Lee was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa from UNC-Chapel Hill. He currently lives in Chapel Hill.
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“The Celebration of Educator, Community Leader, Advocate, And Trailblazer Mrs. Lillian Lee,” https://spectacularmag.com/2023/05/16/the-celebration-of-educator-community-leader-advocate-and-trailblazer-mrs-lillian-lee/; “Founder, Howard N. Lee Institute,” https://kenaninstitute.unc.edu/people/howard-lee/; “Howard N. Lee: Doctor of Laws,” https://commencement.unc.edu/2024/03/18/howard-n-lee/.
