growth were the real point of the life of Malcolm
X” (Haskins, 87–88). Lee’s Malcolm X, particularly
his emphasis on the full spectrum of the black ex-
perience and urban culture, represent well the di-
rect relationship between film and literature. Lee’s
textual depictions correspond to the written texts
of RICHARD WRIGHT and JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN.
Spike Lee has achieved a distinct significance in
African-American culture and American cinema.
His advocacy for more black filmmakers and black
representation on screen has made him a consis-
tent and demanding voice for inclusion within the
Hollywood system and American society in gen-
eral. Much more than just a filmmaker, Spike Lee
has been an activist whose work has been a weapon
for transforming old racial politics and celebrating
African-American experiences.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Donalson, Melvin. Black Directors in Hollywood. Aus-
tin: University of Texas Press, 2003.
Jim Haskins, Spike Lee: By Any Means Necessary. New
York: Walker and Company, 1997.
Lee, Spike, and Lisa Jones. Uplift the Race: the Con-
struction of School Daze. New York: Fireside Books,
1988.
Mel Donalson
Lester, Julius (1939– )
A columnist, political activist, author, folk singer,
radio personality, and photographer and the son
of a Methodist minister who later converted to
Judaism, Lester was born in St. Louis, Missouri.
He grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and on his
grandmother’s farm in Arkansas in the segre-
gated South, where he came to know firsthand the
struggles, challenges, achievements, and victories
of black life recorded by RICHARD WRIGHT, MAYA
ANGELOU, and ERNEST GAINES in their fiction and
nonfiction. After graduating from Fisk University
with a degree in music and literature in 1960, Les-
ter became actively involved in the CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT, joining the Student Non-violent Co-
ordinating Committee (SNCC) and serving as the
head of its photo department from 1966 to 1968.
Before embarking on a career in literature, folklore,
and history, Lester was a folk singer; he performed
with Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, and Judy Collins and
recorded two albums.
While working for SNCC, Lester wrote and pub-
lished his first political text, Look Out Whitey! Black
Power Is Gon’ Get Your Mama! (1969), in which he
attempts to use his voice and eyes as vehicles of the
BLACK POWER movement that burgeoned at the end
of the 1960s. He sets out to explain to a primarily
white reading audience the political transforma-
tion, indeed revolution, taking place in America
during this decade, simultaneously recording his
own political activism and reflecting his radical-
ism and ideology, which he also vociferously made
known through his weekly radio program for the
Pacifica Foundation on New York’s WBAI-FM,
his live television show on New York’s WNET,
the black history courses on cultural revolution
he taught at the New School for Social Research,
and articles he published in The Guardian and
Liberation. Many of his essays were collected and
published in Revolutionary Notes (1969). As some-
one who did not merely experience the turbulent
1960s but tried to shape them through political ac-
tivities, Lester attempted to give insights into this
most troubled time in American history in Search
for the New Land (1969).
Lester gained attention for his award-win-
ning juvenile literature, particularly To Be a Slave
(1968)—the 1968 Newbery Medal runner-up—
and Black Folktales (1969). Lester’s interest in his
personal history as the descendant of slaves led him
to collect and write the memories of former slaves
in To Be a Slave, allowing readers to imagine what
it was like to be a slave—to be chattel—though a
human being. To Be a Slave, which runs the gamut
of experiences from being captured in traditional
Africa to life on the plantation and life after eman-
cipation, has been a touchstone children’s book for
more than three decades. Lester also engages the
topic of slavery in Long Journey Home (1972), This
Strange New Feeling (1982), and From Slave Ships
to Freedom Road (1998).
Lester’s Black Folktales is a powerful record of
black orality and its central place in the African-
American literary tradition. He tells a variety of312 Lester, Julius