THE DIGITAL REPOSITORY FOR THE BLACK EXPERIENCE
"People in Hell Want Ice Water. If It Don't Have Feet, It Can't Walk."
Professor, educational researcher, school director, and author Carol D. Lee (also known as Safisha Madhubuti) was born on August 26, 1945. She attended Chicago Public Schools and graduated from Crane High School. Lee then attended Illinois Wesleyan University and received her B.A. degree in the teaching of secondary school English in 1966 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her M.A. degree in English in 1969 and her Ph.D. degree in education in 1991 from the University of Chicago.
Lee became an instructor in the English department of Chicago’s Englewood High School in 1966 and Kennedy-King College in 1969. In 1972, Lee, Haki Madhubuti, Soyini Walton, and Johari Amini founded the Institute of Positive Education and the New Concept Development Center (later New Concept School), of which she served as director, in Chicago. In 1991, Lee became an assistant professor, and later an endowed professor, in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she also held a joint appointment in the Department of African American Studies. In 1998, Lee and Madhubuti founded the Betty Shabazz International Charter Schools in Chicago. Lee became professor emeritus at Northwestern upon her retirement in 2019. Lee is the author of numerous books, articles, and other publications.
Lee has served as president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and its representative to the World Educational Research Association, vice-president of Division G (Social Contexts of Education) of the AERA, president of the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy, and co-chair of the Research Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English. Lee also has served as a member of the National Academy of Education in the United States, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the AERA, a fellow of the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy, a member of the Reading Hall of Fame, and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences.
Lee has been a recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the National Council of Teachers of English, the Scholars of Color Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Educational Research Association, the Walder Award for Research Excellence at Northwestern University, the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the President’s Pacesetters Award from the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, a Presidential Citation from the American Educational Research Association, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Lee resides in Country Club Hills, Illinois, with her husband, Haki Madhubuti. They have six children: Laini Madhubuti, Bomani Madhubuti, Akili Madhubuti, Shabaka Madhubuti, Regina Alcantar, and Mariama Richards.
Carol D. Lee was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on October 4, 2021.