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Bill Lann Lee is scheduled to speak at NCCU's May 13 commencement. Lee is the Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Justice.

Lee, one of the country's leading civil rights attorneys, has a long and distinguished history of defending the rights of all Americans. He has successfully argued cases concerning employment discrinfination, access to health care, prevention of lead poisoning in children, and access to public transportation.

Before his appointment at the Department of Justice, Lee served as Western Regional Counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Educational for the NAACP Legal and Defense Fund, the civil rights law firm founded by the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Lee has been with the Center for Law in the Public Interest and he has taught political science at Fordham University.

Lee was born and raised in New York City, where his parents owned a small laundry. After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science, Lee won a scholarship to Yale University. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude in 1971. He earned his law degree in 1974 at the Columbia University School of Law.

-from Echo staff reports