[8] He said his work was inspired by an 1869 photograph he had seen in a social studies textbook that celebrated the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Summit, Utah.

On the day the picture was published, 20,000 people marched from Chinatown to City Hall protesting police brutality in response to the beating of Peter Yew.

[13] Chin was a young Chinese American man living in Detroit who was killed by Ronald Ebens, a superintendent at Chrysler Motors, and his stepson.

[15] Lee said his camera was a sword to combat racial injustice, to memorialize and make visible those who would otherwise be invisible[16] by documenting the lives of minority-American cultures and communities.

He developed complications of the virus and died at Long Island Jewish Hospital in Forest Hills, Queens, New York on January 27, 2021.

[6][9][21] It is believed that he became infected with the virus while patrolling Chinatown with neighborhood watch groups that were protecting residents from the rise in anti-Asian violence.

[27] Streaming on PBS Passport, PHOTOGRAPHIC JUSTICE: The Corky Lee Story is a 2024 documentary feature about Corky Lee, "a loving tribute and valuable testament of one man's inexhaustible mission" (New York Sun) "to push mainstream media to include AAPI culture in the visual record of American history.... produc an astonishing archive of nearly a million compelling photographs."