J. Kenneth Lee

*Photo-Civil rights attorney J. Kenneth Lee talks about the many social changes he has witnessed over his long career during an interview in Greensboro in 2009. He died recently at the age of 94.*

Civil rights lawyer J. Kenneth Lee, who fought to integrate Greensboro schools has died.
by Nancy McLaughlin Jul 23, 2018

GREENSBORO — J. Kenneth Lee, a civil rights attorney who represented five black children who sued Greensboro City Schools so they could attend an all-white elementary school — among the first students in the South to successfully do so — has died.

The funeral for the 94-year-old Lee, a quiet force in the nation's fight for equality, is 11:30 a.m., July 30, at Providence Baptist Church in Greensboro. Visitation is 30 minutes before the service. A private burial is planned.

Over a lifetime, Lee fought for equality not only for schools open to all children but also in economic opportunity that he knew could be life changing. He was a plaintiff in a case argued by Thurgood Marshall, then chief legal counselor with the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, to desegregate UNC's law school, opening the university's doors for entry to other black students.

Marshall would go on to become the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice and, upon graduation, Lee would argue civil rights cases across North Carolina.

"My brother saw problems and got to work on solutions," said his sister, Winona Fletcher, of Maryland.

Lee, who earned a degree in electrical engineering from N.C. A&T, decided to go to law school to fight Jim Crow laws. He represented the majority of the 1,700 civil disobedience cases in North Carolina that started with the Woolworth sit-ins of 1960 and included the arrest of his own son, Michael.

He also founded American Federal, the first black federally-chartered savings and loan bank in the state.
Lee, who sold his Benbow Park home and moved into assisted living recently, was preceded in death by his college sweetheart and wife, Nancy Young Lee, and an only child, Michael Lee.

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Source:https://www.greensboro.com/.../article_e6d0e593-5f8f-5fa4...