James Oscar Lee

James Oscar Lee was born on April 13, 1910, in Washington D. C. to Alfred Henry Lee and Mabel Weaver. The family had moved to Philadelphia by the time Lee was 6. His father, Alfred worked as a machinist and died by the time Lee reached the age of 12. He attended Lincoln University, graduating with a bachelors degree in 1931 where he also won the Coberth Humanitarian Prize for his humanitarian interests at the school. He married Alice Worsham, a student at Virginia Union University, in 1932. He would go on to receive a scholarship to attend Yale Divinity School, graduating with a bachelor’s of divinity in 1935. During his time at Yale, he won a $150 prize for the best thesis on the New Testament.¹

Following his graduation, Lee worked as an instructor in social ethics at Howard University. After a year at Howard, he began working at the Hampton Institute as an assistant to the chaplain. He would receive a master’s degree from the Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1940. In that same year, he became a teacher-missionary at Virginia Union University in their School of Religion. In 1943, he took a position as assistant secretary of the Connecticut Council of Churches, becoming the first Black person in a senior position at the organization. He would also pursue a doctorate at the Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, receiving his doctorate degree in 1946 and becoming the first Black doctoral holder at the school. He succeeded George Edmund Haynes, another Black Yale graduate, as executive secretary of the Race Relations Department of the Federal Council of Churches. In his position, he organized and spoke on improving race relations and organizing churches to advance civil rights. One task Lee spearheaded within the organization was integrating churches, pushing for racially inclusive worship amongst the council’s member churches. He also worked across different faiths to advance civil rights by engaging in dialogues with leaders from the Jewish, Muslim, and Orthodox communities. He served as an editor of the Interracial News Service and the Race Relations Sunday Packet. Lee was also a member of the National Conference of Christians and Jews where he became director of education in 1967. He later became the vice president of the organization in 1971.²

He would receive an honorary doctorate of divinity from Lincoln University in 1965. Stationed in Brooklyn in the late 1960s, Lee was appointed by the mayor of New York City to the Board of Higher Education and a trusteeship at City University of New York. He would go on to help found Medgar Evers College and serve as chairman of the Community Council of Medgar Evers College. He was also a director of Brooklyn Psychiatric Center, Brookdale Hospital, and the New York City Floating Hospital. He retired to Asbury Methodist Village in Gaithersburg, Maryland where he died on June 11, 1995. He is buried in Saint Columba’s Episcopal Church in Washington D.C.³

The Christian Citizen and Civil Rights: A Guide to Study and Action. New York, NY: National Board of the Young Womens Christian Associations of the United States of America, 1949. Manual for cooperative work in race relations. New York, NY: Department of Race Relations, Federal Council of Churches, 1950. “The Religious Life and Needs of Negro Youth,” The Journal of Negro Education 19, no. 3 (1950). “The Status of Racial Integration in Religious Institutions,” The Journal of Negro Education 23, no. 3 (1954). “Protestant Churches and Public School Desegregation,” Social Problems 2, no. 4 (1955). “Religion among Ethnic and Racial Minorities,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 332 (1960). “Review of Race Relations in International Affairs,” The Journal of Negro Education 32, no. 1 (1963). “Review of Discord in Brown and White,” The Journal of Negro Education 32, no. 1 (1963).