Howard Nathaniel Lee

Photo of Howard Lee from a pamphlet published during his 1969 campaign for mayor of Chapel Hill, N.C.

Howard Nathaniel Lee (born July 28, 1934 in Georgia) is an American politician from the U.S. state of North Carolina. Lee served as mayor of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, from 1969 to 1975.^[1] He was not only the first African-American Mayor of Chapel Hill, but also the first African-American to be elected mayor of any predominantly white city in the American South.^[2]

Early life and education

Howard Nathaniel Lee was born to Howard Lee and Lou Temple on July 28, 1934, on a sharecropper's farm outside Lithonia, Georgia.^[3] Lee graduated from Bruce Street High School in 1953, and began his freshman year at Clark College of Atlanta that fall. Lee transferred to Fort Valley State College in 1956 and graduated in 1959, the first member of his family to receive a college diploma.

Lee was drafted into the U.S. Army during the summer of 1959 and completed basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. Lee received medical corpsman training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, before being stationed at Fort Hood. While at Fort Hood, Lee organized two sit-ins in the town of Killeen. The second sit-in was reported back to Fort Hood, and Lee was stationed in Korea the next week. Lee served as an ambulance driver and assistant company clerk at Camp Casey until his honorable discharge in 1961.

Lee moved to Savannah, Georgia, served as a juvenile probation officer, and married Lillian Wesley in 1962. He moved to North Carolina in 1964 and received a master's degree in social work from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1965, he joined the faculties of Duke University and North Carolina Central University.

Political career

After encountering racial tension in his predominantly white Chapel Hill neighborhood, Lee decided to enter local politics.^[4] In February 1969, Lee announced his mayoral candidacy. The ensuing election saw a record 4,734 votes cast. On May 6, 1969, Lee was elected mayor of Chapel Hill. He was the first African American to hold the position in a predominantly white city, and the first to do so in the South since Reconstruction. He won by a narrow margin but would go on to be re-elected twice, earning 64 percent of the vote in 1971 and 89 percent in 1973.^[5] Lee was reelected for a second term in 1971.^[3]

In 1976, Lee sought the Democratic Party nomination for Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina, but was defeated in the primary election. In 1977, Governor Jim Hunt appointed Lee as the Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Natural Resources and Community Development, a post which he held until 1981.

Lee returned to electoral politics in 1990 when he was elected to the North Carolina Senate. He served from 1990 to 1994 and 1996 to 2002. While in the Senate, he concentrated particularly on issues affecting public education.

On May 1, 2003, the North Carolina State Board of Education elected him as its chairman, succeeding Phil Kirk. In 2009, Gov. Beverly Perdue announced that she was appointing Lee as the new executive director of the N.C. Education Cabinet, composed of leaders of public schools, community colleges and public and private universities. This meant Lee would give up his seat on the Board of Education.^[6]

He also served as a member of the North Carolina Utilities Commission, having been appointed by Governor Mike Easley on April 1, 2005.

Non-profit work

In his retirement, Lee founded the Howard N. Lee Institute, which "focuses on erasing the achievement gap and improving academic performance for minority males."^[7]

See also

• List of first African-American mayors
• List of mayors of Chapel Hill, North Carolina

External links

• Oral History Interview with Howard Nathaniel Lee from Oral Histories of the American South
• Finding Aid: Billy E. Barnes Photographic Collection, 1959-1996, in the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, UNC-Chapel Hill

References