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COTTON PATCH PRESS
978-0-9816921-0-4
0-9816921-0-9
$24.95 hardcover
6 X 9
208 pages
Biography/Cultural Heritage
AVAILABLE NOW
Click here to watch Bill Friday interview Howard Lee |
On May 6, 1969, Howard Lee made history when he was elected the first black mayor of a predominantly white town in the South. Chapel Hill was home to the prestigious University of North Carolina, but only 10 percent of the town's 12,500 permanent residents were black, and only half of those were even registered to vote. In a surprising upset, Lee changed history.
In 1976 Lee ran for lieutenant governor of North Carolina. During the Democratic primary, he was the victim of subtle racial appeals, including a rumor that said if he were elected, blacks would hire an assassin to kill the governor, making Lee governor. He lost the primary. That fall, Governor Jim Hunt appointed Lee to the position of secretary of the Department of Natural and Economic Resources, making him the first black member of a governor's cabinet in the South.
In The Courage to Lead, Lee tells about his life growing up on a sharecropper's farm in Georgia during segregation. He tells about the hurdles he faced, as well as the triumphs and the people who helped him during his college and army days and his long and respected political career in North Carolina.
excerpt from The Courage to Lead:
It was at Binkley Baptist Church that I met Dean Smith for the first time. He was on the rise but had not yet become a famous coach. I recall when he was first introduced to me as Dean Smith. I thought "Dean" was his position title at the university. So I naively asked, "Dean, now tell me what department do you head up?" He just smiled, and before he could respond someone else said, "He heads up a department called basketball." I was embarrassed and apologized. In spite of that awkward start, we developed a strong friendship, and Lillian and I developed a close relationship with the basketball program.
Our initial involvement was to help Dean Smith recruit UNC's first black basketball player, Charlie Scott, in 1968. During his years at UNC, Charlie spent many hours at our house and we shared many meals with him--as we did with a long list of basketball and football players. From th e late sixties until Dean's retirement in the nineties, Lillian and I participated in recruiting many of the basketball team's players, including Michael Jordan, J.R. Reid, Rick Foxx, Sam Perkins, Jimmy Black, James Worthy, Al Wood, Matt Doherty, George Karl, and the list goes on. Our oldest daughter, Angela, became one of Dean's key assistants and worked with the players' families.
In her role as surrogate mother, Lillian also became a link with the parents. At the end of each basketball season she would prepare a huge southern-style dinner for the players, which she called a soul food feast. She invited all the players, and the white players looked forward to it just as much as the black ones. She would fix chitlins, pig feet, fried chicken, collard greens, cornbread, and cakes. It was fun watching the black players challenge the white players to eat chitlins. Even many black players from the North struggled.
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