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Originally published in Southport Living (December 2025)Written by Theresa Painter. Photos by Kristin Gettleman. In the tranquil, waterfront community of Indigo Plantation in Southport, you’ll find Otis L. Lee, Jr. and Michelle Palmer Lee, a couple whose lives are as rich and varied as the…

Otis Lee's book talk at the Harper Library in Southport, NC briefly touched on his first two books, but gives a deep dive - almost scholarly - into the Quilombos of Brazil. In this 90-minute talk, you get a comprehensive overview of the plight of the Quilombolas, the history, the culture, their way of life, and their

Lang Dixon, a perennial Million Dollar Roundtable Award Producer, was the quintessential estate planning life insurance agent. As a team Lang and I implemented estate plans for many of Philadelphia’s most Black citizens.

When the time came to move to Charlottesville, it was the summer of 1960. For all we knew Charlottesville might as well have been in Charlotte, North Carolina which was named for Queen Charlotte of England. I was thirteen years old, having finished the sixth grade at Baker Upper Elementary School. My father was hired by Paul H. Cale, the superintendent of Albemarle County Schools, to be the new principal of a new Black elementary School, Virginia L. Murray, being completed in

“Red” they called him fondly, was raised in southern Georgia. One of seven children raised by a widowed mother. He knew poverty, but not hunger; knew deprivation but did not lack for love and affection. He experienced loss, but not the loss of hope, pain but not despair. His energy for triumph over adversity was boundless, and he reinsured that his later life would not reflect his humble roots.

Now, I am not a historian but I am, a student of history. As one of my favorite historians, John Hope Franklin, has said, I am self tutored on many of these matters. Perhaps self tutoring is the best way to learn anything thoroughly.

When I was a kid growing up in Richmond, Virginia between 1953 and 1960, I lived in a middle class neighborhood of single family two story, three and four bedroom homes, some of frame, painted white, others with various types of siding, each built on half acre lots with front yards providing aesthetic balance, and back yards large and deep enough for the neighborhood kids to romp, wrestle, play hide and seek, and dwell in the kid’s world of imagination. In keeping with Southe

Bring Me All Of Your Dreams You Dreamer: Languidly, the lion roams the jungle of his environment looking for prey. Awakened from his somnolence, hunger motivates his restlessness. To satisfy this basic need, he only wants to attack prey that he knows and feels that he can subdue, after all, he does not want to work but so hard.

Economists view the price system within the macro economy as a function of supply and demand and market share. Prices can be determined by particular producers who exercise price leadership and market share in a particular industry or in a particular commodity. The allocation of resources and their scarcity is also a factor in determining price. A market mechanism normally is required to determine prices. The dictionary definition of price is “the amount of money needed t

To the family, pulpit guest, and to all of you who have come to pay respects to my friend and to your friend Bryant McCl oskey, good morning and greetings. I am delighted to see so many of my friends from New York life and from my professional days here in Philadelphia. Venessa, when she asked me to say some words about her father, allotted me 2 minutes and I have already used 30 seconds of that time. So let me get right to it.

Keynote Speech by Otis Lee, Jr. Esq at Cedar Grove circa 2019, on culture and hard work; taking advantages of opportunities by building on our ancestors' achievements.

The forefathers of this organization had the vision and courage to embark on a mission of salvation to improve the health and welfare of this community, a community, at that time that suffered from the twin afflictions of deprivation and the extremes of incivility to say the least. Through later generations the ethic of hard work and perseverance continued and it is a challenge to those of you who have taken on the mantle of leadership to perpetuate that legacy.