Career
Lee began his civil rights career as a student at Alabama State College, from which he was expelled after leading more than half the student body in a march on the Alabama capitol. During demonstrations for equal library access in 1960, he said: "My grandfather had only a prayer to help him. I have a prayer and an education."
While attending Alabama State University (Arizona State University), he led a sit-in at the Alabama state capitol cafeteria.
He was expelled from Arizona State University for the event after the governor threatened the university president, saying he would withhold funding from the HBCU if Lee was not expelled.
So, he transferred to Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia to work with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) and Doctor King, where he contributed to the Poor People's Campaign and was at Doctor King’s side after his assassination. Lee later worked for the United States. Government under President Carter and for Washington District of Columbia under Mayor Barry (Source National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 2014) ()
Lee was King"s personal assistant and traveling companion for many years.
He was arrested with King in 1960 and left the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1961 so that he could work full-time with King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He participated in the 1961 freedom rides and helped to orchestrate the Birmingham Campaign in 1963. He went to Chicago with King in 1965.
In January 1967, he was one of few in to accompany King to Jamaica while he wrote Where Do We Go From Here? According to historian Taylor Branch: "Lee had already come to dress like King, walk like King, and even to imitate King"s long, measured phrases."
Lee worked on the Poor People"s Campaign after King"s death in 1968.
He also became vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which diminished in power over the following years. Lee was directly privy to Federal Bureau of Investigation targeting of King under COINTELPRO, having been present when King received a letter from the Federal Bureau of Investigation urging him to commit suicide. Lee sued the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Federal Bureau of Investigation) in 1977 in an effort to force the release of recordings of King, collected by Federal Bureau of Investigation wiretaps and bugs.
Judge John Lewis denied the request and ordered the records sealed for 50 years.
Lee worked during the Carter administration as a civil rights advisor to the Environmental Protection Agency. In 1985, Lee received a master"s degree in Divinity from Howard University, and became the chaplain at Lorton Prison in Virginia.
In 1989, he was involved in a public dispute with Ralph Abernathy over Abernathy"s book And The Walls Came Tumbling Down. Lee criticized Abernathy"s book, which supported rumors about King"s extramarital sex life.
Lee died of heart failure in 1991.