Cleveland Lee was promised payment in the form of "money" for his entrepreneurial skills and services to Harambee Center, Inc. A Black Afrikan American owned non-profit corporation by Harambee Community School Board of Directors. He finds himself in the school board's cross hairs after completing a $5.2 million expansion campaign, endowment, Afrikan Centered Curriculum and the hiring on the Honorable Russell Stamper, Sr. as school "Headmaster". With a vengeful school board and their attorneys hot about Lee's support for "Harambee Parents United for Change", Lee is forced by the courts to relinquish his authority, give up $1.2 million in contracted services and defend himself against an anti-black power Wisconsin Criminal Justice System. Convicted of embezzlement, forgery, and tax evasion of $626,000 dollars of his own money and imprisoned by government officials who promote injustice and inequality. Tricksters operating under "equal justice for all under the rule of law".
Cleveland Lee, artist, educator, publisher, and entrepreneur graduate of Martin High School, Altheimer, Arkansas. I grew up on Elm Plantation in the 50's and 60's, a 1972 graduate of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff with a Bachelor of Science degree in Art Education with a minor in History. From 1973 to 1979 I served as a teacher and the latter years as chairman of the Rufus King High School Art Department and Steuben Middle School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As a practicing visual artist in 1974, member of the Freewheelers Artist & Craftsman Association receiving "Best in Show" award at the Inner City Arts Council Community Festival in 1977. My first one man show titled "Birthright" in 1978 reviewed by Journal Art Editor James Auer: "The Mourner's Bench", "a scene of religious ecstasy; is also a symbol of coming of age, but with the soul rather than the body circumcised"; "Baptism", a new world parallel for the African practice of cleansing before returning to the tribe, the "Holy Ghost", which shows worshippers possessed with the Holy Spirit is set in a Southern Church. "The Funeral" final earthly phase in Lee's chronology and as the series ends "Going Up Yonder" presents the literal ascent into heaven in terms of gracefully interwoven, up thrust hands against a luminous sky. dean Jensen Journal Sentinel Art Critic has this to say: "When Lee is good, he is very good", stylistically, Lee reminds somewhat of Jacob Lawrence, a black painter whose work Lee became familiar with when he was a senior at the University of Arkansas. I am married to the lovely Carolyn Pickens Lee and together we have three sons and a daughter. Cleveland Anthony Lee, Jr., Chadwick Omar Lee, Crystall Lorraine Lee, and Casey James Lee. A son Steven L. Johnson, all residing in Houston, Texas. Seven handsome grandsons soon to be eight and three beautiful granddaughters. The Lord is my Shepard.
