Bill Lann Lee (born February 5, 1949) is a Chinese American civil rights lawyer who served as Assistant United States Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division for the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division under President Bill Clinton.
He is married to Carolyn Yee with whom he has two sons and a daughter. He currently resides in Berkeley, California.
Born February 5, 1949 in New York City, Lee and his family were not strangers to discrimination and bigotry. Lee's father had endured racial taunting as a young man. He hoped for better treatment after he returned from serving honorably in World War II, where he felt he was treated as an equal. However, when he returned to New York, he was denied housing and employment due to his race.
Lee's parents owned a small hand laundry, where they made a modest living and taught Lee and his brother Ernest valuable life lessons about family, hard work, justice, and patriotism.
After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science, Lee attended Yale University on a scholarship. As an undergraduate, Lee majored in History and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He graduated magna cum laude in 1971. Throughout school, both as a young child and a student at Yale, Lee felt alienated from the greater society because of his Asian heritage. In 1974, he earned his J.D. from Columbia University Law School, where he was a Stone Scholar and won the Best Moot Court Prize.
You're supposed to sit on your ass and nod at stupid things
Man, that's hard to do
And if you don't, they'll screw you
And if you do, they'll screw you, too
When I'm standing in the middle of the diamond all alone
I always play to win
When it comes to skin and bone
And sometimes I say things I shouldn't
Like....
And sometimes I say things I shouldn't
Like....