 | Born: 1894
Died: 1976
“Up from the docks of the Mississippi River, up from the saloons, the bawdy houses on Beale, up from the honky-tonks of the sawmill towns, up from the white cotton fields of Dixie, accompanied by banjo strumming and hand-clapping, rose the sorrow songs of the Negro toiler. Beale Street band masters emphasized the native and nationalistic elements of these songs and sent their echoes floating around the world. [W.C.] Handy set them to music and the jazz age was at last a reality.“ - George W. Lee, 'Beale Street: Where the Blues Began' 1934 George Washington Lee was important and cool at the same time. That's not always easy. Known around town as Lieutenant Lee, the name had a double meaning. Lee was a lieutenant in the army during World War I and was later thought of as a right arm for Memphis millionaire and strongman Bob Church. While many political activists left their marks in hard won, inch by inch legislation, George W. Lee added to that with his body of written work, especially 1934's 'Beale Street: Where the Blues Began' .
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Known on the streets of early twentieth-century Memphis as "Lieutenant Lee," both for his army service as a lieutenant in World War I and as the lieutenant for the powerful African American capitalist and Republican Party leader Robert Church Sr., George W. Lee was born in Indianola, Mississippi, on January 4, 1894. He received his bachelor's degree from Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Alcorn State University) and served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army in France during World War I.
Lee was a leading Republican and successful black businessman. He took issue with Booker T. Washington's policy of political accommodation preferring instead to promote economic self sufficiency, self-help and black pride. He was able to promote black business opportunities through his connections to local banks and insurance companies. He is best known today as the Historian of Beale Street due to his best selling book Beale Street: Where the Blues Began published in 1934 which became a book of the month in the Book of the Month Club. At one point Lee briefly hosted a radio show of African American music from his offices on Beale Street.
Friends with important black Memphians from W.C. Handy to Robert Church Jr., Lee was an outspoken and very influential leader of the African-American community. He worked to de-emphasize integration as a panacea to the plight of his people and strongly distrusted the leadership and advice of black leaders receiving large contributions from white northerners. Primary focuses of his contempt were the policies of Booker T. Washington (and the “Tuskegee Elders) and local black ministers such as Rev. Sutton Griggs who along with other black church ministers, formed something called the "Inter-Racial League," which, of course, turned out to have an all-black membership. (Some called it the "lily-black inter-racial league.")1
The efforts of men like Church and Lee to promote black commerce were effective if not perfect. Some incidents such as the Fraternal and Solvent Savings Bank failure brought on by dishonest bank officers were used to discredit the advancement that had been achieved. Lee argued that the black community was no more or less prone to dishonesty than the white community. It was the duty of the black community to prosecute their criminals just as the white community had done for centuries. The greatest discredit to the movement of influential black business leaders was brought on by the Great Depression.
In 1937 Lee wrote the novel River George, a portrait of a young African American World War I military officer who finds little but hard times upon return to his native land and is finally lynched. Lee's last book was Beale Street Sundown (1942), a collection of stories about the folk life of the African American community of Memphis.
Lieutenant George W. Lee Avenue, the location of the Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum, is named in his honor.