Lee was a graduate of the notable majority-black
Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. He was awarded a bachelor's degree and a master's degree by
Howard University, where he was also named a university fellow. At Howard he was a founding member of the short-lived Gamma Tau fraternity that was organized as an alternative to the extant system. He taught at
Lincoln University in Pennsylvania from 1936 to 1943. During this period Lee served as a contributor or editor on several notable literature projects (usually with a focus on "Negro history and culture") including
The Negro Caravan and the
Federal Writers' Project. Lee's FWP work included contributions to the
American Guide Series book
City and Capital (1937) and
The Negro in Virginia (1940).
The Negro in Virginia is considered the most successful of the FWP's African-American history publications, it was said to have attained "the vibrancy of literature." He also published book reviews, such as a commentary on
J. Winston Coleman's
Slavery Times in Kentucky, which he acknowledged as valuable while simultaneously identifying cases of paternalistic condescension in the text. Lee, along with
Sterling Brown and
Arthur P. Davis, was a co-editor of
Caravan, a pioneering anthology of
African-American literature first published in 1942. One reviewer, Harvey Curtis Webster, wrote of the book, "The pleasure of reading
The Negro Caravan is hardly undermined by the fact that one emerges a more enlightened human being." In her newspaper column My Day,
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote that
The Negro Caravan "should be in everyone's library." Having been in
ROTC at Howard, Lee was initially commissioned a first lieutenant with the
Tuskegee Airmen. He was the author-editor of the
Army Service Forces manual,
Leadership and the Negro Soldier, published in 1944. After World War II he earned his doctorate
Phi Beta Kappa at the
University of Chicago. At the time of his death he was also a professor of American civilization at Penn State through a cooperative program with Morgan State and was the editor-designate of the
Journal of Negro History. Dr. Lee's funeral was at the
Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Sterling Brown of Howard University gave the eulogy. Dr. Lee is buried at
Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in
Suitland, Maryland. == Personal ==