City of Oxford Other localities George Washington Lee (December 25, 1903 – May 7, 1955) was an African-American civil rights leader, minister, and entrepreneur.

He was a vice president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership and head of the Belzoni, Mississippi, branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

[1] During the 1930s and the Great Depression, Lee accepted a call to become a preacher in Belzoni, Mississippi, where he led a Baptist congregation.

These efforts provided enough resources that Lee felt he had a base for entering the battle for civil rights in the early 1950s.

[1] Whites were enraged by the previous year's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court's in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), ruling that segregated public schools were unconstitutional.

Lee was a vice president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, a leading black organization in the state.

[1] In April, Lee spoke at the Council's annual meeting, which drew a crowd of more than 7,000 to the all-black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

Readers of the Chicago Defender shared Rosebud Lee's outrage by viewing a photo of her husband's body.

Tensions were high in this small rural Delta town, as whites had long expected deference from the black majority.

Howard and Roy Wilkins, the national president of the NAACP, shared the speakers' platform at Lee's funeral.

Medgar Evers reputedly "cut his teeth" on the Lee case, continually feeding information to the press.

Lee's death captured national attention, highlighting the oppressive nature of Mississippi Jim Crow and the violence black residents had to face to exercise ordinary rights.

Lee exemplified a generation of activists who used business success to build a platform to work as mature men on civil rights.