1. Julius Bernard Lester was an American writer of books for children and adults and an academic who taught for 32 years at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
15 Facts About Julius Lester
1. 2.
Julius Lester spent his summers with his grandmother on her farm in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
3.
Fechner and Lester had a son together named David Julius.
4.
Julius Lester traveled to North Vietnam with SNCC to photograph and write about the damage caused by US bombing missions there.
5.
Julius Lester has said that his conversion journey began when he was seven and learned that his maternal great-grandfather, Adolph Altschul, was a Jewish immigrant from Germany, who married a freed slave.
6.
Julius Lester adopted the Hebrew name Yaakov Daniel ben Avraham v'Sarah.
7.
Julius Lester was a leader of the Beth El Synagogue in St Johnsbury, Vermont, from 1991 to 2001.
8.
From 1968 to 1970, alongside his activities as a radio host in New York, Julius Lester taught Afro-American history at the New School for Social Research.
9.
In 1988, Julius Lester came into conflict with his colleagues in the Afro-American Studies department upon the publication of his book Lovesong, which chronicles his conversion to Judaism.
10.
In March 1988, in a unanimous step, the Afro-American Studies faculty wrote a letter to the university administration recommending that Julius Lester be reassigned to a different department.
11.
Julius Lester was awarded all three of the university's most prestigious faculty awards: the Distinguished Teacher's Award, the Faculty Fellowship Award for Distinguished Research and Scholarship, and the Chancellor's Medal, the university's highest honor.
12.
Julius Lester's first book was an instructional guide to playing the 12-string guitar, co-authored with Pete Seeger.
13.
Julius Lester's photographs have been included in an exhibit of images from the civil rights movement at the Smithsonian Institution.
14.
Julius Lester had solo shows at the University of Massachusetts Student Union Gallery, the Forbes Library, Northampton, Mass.
15.
Julius Lester died of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on January 18,2018, after a brief hospitalization.