Early Years
Lee was born September 22, 1924, in Eagle Rock in northern Botetourt County to James Jackson Lee and Georgiana Ray Lee. The Lee family were active members of the Rising Mount Zion Baptist Church in Eagle Rock. Lee attended a segregated elementary school in Eagle Rock and graduated high school from the Academy Hill School for Negroes in Fincastle. He was noted to be an excellent student.
Military Career
Lee enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. In 1943, he was selected for the flight training program for the unit of Black pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen. He underwent flight training at the Tuskegee Army Air Field and earned his pilot wings but was not assigned to a combat squadron due to a speech impediment. Lee served in the South Pacific in a segregated United States Army Air Forces unit on a ground crew in the late stages of World War II.
After the war, Lee enrolled in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program while attending Howard University and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Air Force Reserve. Lee was promoted up the ranks, ultimately retiring as a lieutenant colonel. His reserve duty included assignments in Washington, D.C., at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, and at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia.
After retiring from the Air Force Reserves in 1980, Lee enlisted in the District of Columbia Air National Guard’s 113th Tactical Fighter Wing, serving at Andrews Air Force Base until completing his military service in 1982.
Boxing Career
Lee began boxing while attending Howard University after World War II. In 1948, he was selected as an alternate for the U.S. Olympic boxing team for the Games of the XIV Olympiad in London, which had been postponed due to World War II, but he did not compete. In 1949 and 1950, Lee won the heavyweight central division Intercollegiate Athletic Association championship. He won national Golden Gloves titles in 1950, 1951, and 1952, and a bronze medal at the Pan-American Games in Argentina in 1951.
Lee was selected as an alternate for the U.S. boxing team in the heavyweight division for the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, but he lost fifteen pounds in two weeks so he could compete in the light heavyweight division. He won a gold medal on August 2, becoming the first Black Virginian to win an Olympic gold medal. He also was awarded the Val Barker Trophy as the most outstanding boxer of the games, becoming the first African American to be bestowed the honor. In 1953, Lee and other prominent athletes were invited to the White House for a luncheon with President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Lee’s final competition was the 1955 Pan American Games in Mexico City, where he won a bronze medal. Despite offers, Lee never turned professional, citing both his age—he was twenty-seven when he won gold at Helsinki—and the fact that he was more of a boxer than a fan-pleasing slugger. He retired in 1955 with an amateur record of one-hundred wins and five losses. Lee remained involved in boxing as a referee, judge, and boxing association executive throughout his life. He served on the District of Columbia Boxing Commission for a decade, including four years as chair. Lee was inducted into the Washington, D.C., Boxing Hall of Fame in 1979 and served as its president. In 1964, he went to Gambia and Mali as a U.S. State Department goodwill ambassador to teach boxing to African youths.
Civil Rights Case
On September 13, 1948, shortly after returning home from the London Olympics, Lee boarded a train in Clifton Forge, near Eagle Rock, and traveled to Covington, Virginia, to visit family. He sat in the section of the car reserved for white passengers and refused to move to the section designated for Black passengers when requested by the conductor. The following day, on his return trip, he took a seat in the front section of the coach just under the sign designating it for white passengers. Again he refused to move when requested by the conductor. The conductor called the Alleghany County sheriff, who arrived and told Lee that he would have to move or get off the train. Lee exited the train, got a refund for his ticket to Clifton Forge, and bought a through ticket to Washington, D.C., since, as he later testified, he was ultimately planning on traveling to Howard University but had to change trains in Clifton Forge regardless. He was arrested by the sheriff when he returned to the train and again sat in the whites-only section.
Lee was convicted and fined five dollars for violating Virginia’s law that required segregation on public transportation. Lee’s attorney, Martin A. Martin of the Richmond firm Hill, Martin, and Robinson, appealed the conviction to the Alleghany County Circuit Court. Lee was again found guilty and fined twenty-five dollars. Martin then appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals (now the Supreme Court of Virginia). In Norvel Lee v. Commonwealth of Virginia, the court overturned Lee’s conviction, ruling that since he was traveling on an interstate ticket on a local train, Virginia’s segregation law could not be enforced. Two years earlier in Morgan v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court found that Virginia’s law requiring segregation on interstate buses was a violation of the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Virginia supreme court ruled there was no valid difference between buses and trains in Lee’s case.
Family and Later Life
Lee married Leslie Ellen Jackson of Leesburg on June 22, 1951, at the Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel at Howard University. They had two daughters: Deborah Louise, born in 1954, and Denise Kay, born in 1955.
After initially declaring himself an engineering major, Lee received a Bachelor of Science degree in physical education from Howard University in 1953 and began a career as a teacher and counselor at the National Training School for Boys in Washington, D.C., a federal juvenile corrections facility. In 1969, he earned a Master of Arts Degree in adult education from Federal City College (now the University of the District of Columbia). He joined the Baltimore City public school system as coordinator of community and adult education in 1974. After retiring from the military, Lee worked in emergency management. He was the director of equal employment opportunity for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the radiological defense officer for the D.C. Office of Emergency Preparedness. Norvel also served as president of the Lamond-Riggs Citizens Association and the National Capital Child Day Care Association.
Lee died from complications of pancreatic cancer on August 19, 1992, at Bethesda Naval Medical Center. He was interred with full military honors next to his wife, Leslie Lee, at Fort Lincoln Cemetery in Brentwood, Maryland.
On February 24, 2022, the Virginia General Assembly unanimously designated a portion of Route 220 in Botetourt County as the Norvel LaFallette Ray Lee Memorial Highway in Lee’s honor. On September 17, 2022, a historical marker was unveiled along the highway near Lee’s childhood home recognizing his contributions as a military officer, civil rights pioneer, boxer, and educator.
