Joseph Lee (March 8, 1862 – July 28, 1937) was a wealthy Bostonian who trained as a lawyer but never practiced law, and is considered the "founder of the playground movement".
"For the one political cause to which this friend of the common man [Lee] devoted the most time, money and sheer fervor for more than twenty years was the movement to restrict immigration.
And in a letter to one of his closest associates he declared that the Catholic Church is a great evil'; revealed his fear that the United States might 'become a Dago nation'; and needed only six words to explain the necessary preventive strategy: 'I believe in exclusion by race.
[7][8] Lee also was in direct contact with his cousin, Henry Cabot Lodge, the senator from Massachusetts, to propose literary tests and additional fees to restrict immigration.
In the view of the Playground Association of America, an organization of which Lee was president from 1910 to 1937, promoting play for children of immigrants was a way to make them more American.