The Author

Born January 27, 1939, Julius Lester was ushered into a largely racialized environment for both American blacks and whites that was still reeling from the legacy of slavery and experiencing the day-to-day injustices of Jim Crow, a series of laws, norms and traditions that supported segregated lifestyles and neighborhoods between blacks and whites and a socioeconomic scheme that polarized the two groups. Whites were favored as 'authentic' Americans and enjoyed privileges that weren't afforded to blacks who were in turn vilified and treated as second class citizens, if citizens at all. It was within this milieu that Lester's visions and voice were both culled and crafted.

While Lester’s birthplace was St. Louis, Missouri, a location outside of and further north than the Deep South, an area historically known for heinous crimes and discrimination that victimized blacks, Lester was made acutely aware of his place in society early on. "He experienced a combustible world in which black men and boys were lynched for even looking at a white woman" (Something About the Author, Volume 157). "I grew up in a violent world, " Lester said, reflecting on his youth in a speech at a symposium in Madison, Wisconsin in 1983. "Segregation was a deathly spiritual violence, not only in its many restrictions on where we could live, eat, go to school, and go after dark. There was also the constant threat of physical death if you looked at a white man in what he considered the wrong way or if he didn't like your attitude" (Children's Literature, Vol. 41). These traumatic and tragic realities shaped Lester's outlook on life and influenced his writing which would often defend black identity, praise the underdog and exalt black heroes. In a letter to George A. Woods, Lester commented on his aesthetic: "we live in a world where race has meaning, conferring superiority to white and inferiority to black... race has been used as a weapon against blacks, blacks must use it as a weapon to free themselves" (Children's Literature Review, Vol. 41).

As Lester became a young man, his investment in the African American Civil Rights Movement (1955- 1968) and the condition of the American black grew. He entered college at Fisk University in 1956 and explored many fields of study, ultimately majoring in English and graduating in 1960. He would dabble in teaching guitar, photography and radio production during this period, but the political turbulence of the time domestically also directed his activities and affiliations. It was during this time that Lester joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He "began as a pacifist, identifying with the philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.; he later promoted the more militant Black Power Movement" (Children's Literature Review, Vol. 41). One of his first recognized publications was 1968's Look Out, Whitey! Black Power's Gon' Get You Mama!. Lester called this piece the "first book about the black power movement from someone who was inside the movement" (Children's Literature Review, Vol. 143).

It was the attention that Look Out, Whitey...! drew that won Lester a teaching appointment at the New School for Social Research in New York City (Children's Literature Review, Vol. 143). He taught there from 1968- 1970 and then "was asked to come up to interview with the black studies department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst" where he taught until 2003 at the time of his retirement (Children's Literature Review, Vol. 143)."

Lester's writing career includes over 40 titles, the most notable of which are likely To Be a Slave (1968), The Uncle Remus Series (beginning in 1987 and published in one set in 1999) and Sam and the Tigers: A New Telling of Little Black Sambo (1996).