Canada Lee 1907-1952:

Athlete, Actor, Activist

Canada Lee, jockey, boxer, bandleader, actor, producer, and activist, was born Leonard Lionel Cornelius Canegata, March 3, 1907 in New York City. His early proficiency playing the violin inspired assumptions of a career in concert performance. In 1921, however, Lee overturned those expectations by running away to Saratoga Springs to pursue a career as a jockey. After a few years on the racing circuit, where his opportunities were limited first by entrenched racism and later by his physical growth, Lee left the racing track for the boxing ring. He began that career in 1927 as a welterweight, accruing a record of 200 fights with only twenty-five loses. He continued boxing until 1933, despite suffering a severe eye injury four years earlier that permanently damaged one eye and ultimately cost him its vision.

Lee hung up his gloves and returned to music briefly, working as a bandleader before moving on to the stage. 1934 saw Lee’s acting debut in Frank Wilson’s badly received Meek Mose but later that year Lee landed a more suitable role, Blacksnake Johnson, in Stevedore. In 1936, Lee joined Orson Welles’s Federal Theatre Project production of "voodoo" Macbeth as Banquo. He would later reunite with Welles to play Bigger Thomas in Welles’s 1941 production of Native Son. Lee’s work on stage opened up opportunities in Hollywood. He followed his film debut in the boxing movie Keep Punching (1939) with Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944). Drawing from his life experiences he gave a noteworthy performance as Ben Chaplin opposite John Garfield in Body and Soul (1947). Lost Boundaries (1949) would be Lee’s final studio film performance.

Lee frequently chose roles that challenged the prevailing stereotypes of African Americans thereby instilling a sense of disquiet in the larger community. Both Stevedore (1934) and On Whitman Avenue (1946) stirred up controversies with their frank portrayals of race relations. Lee’s activism was not limited to his artistic choices. Throughout his career he could be counted on to use his celebrity on behalf of African Americans. He supported the United States engagement in World War II while protesting the segregated conditions under which African Americans served. Lee petitioned for the removal from Congress of Mississippi Senator Theodore G. Bilbo, author of Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization, who in 1945 had voted against the anti-lynching bill, the anti-poll tax bill, and the Fair Employment Practice Committee. In 1947, Lee and other members of the Broadway Committee for the First Amendment went to Washington D.C. to protest the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Lee’s activism brought him under the scrutiny of the HUAC to the detriment of his career. His final film, Cry, The Beloved Country (1951), co-starring Sidney Poitier, was made outside the USA. Canada Lee’s performance as Stephen Kumalo in Cry has been called one of his finest. Poitier later wrote of his respect for Lee, citing him as one of the guiding lights in his acting career. 

--Cfrancis Blackchild

Sources and further readings:

Gill, Glenda Eloise. No Surrender! No Retreat!: African-American Pioneer Performers of Twentieth-Century American Theatre. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000

Schoor, Gene. Courage Makes the Champion. Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc. (Juvenile audience)

Smith, Mona Z. Becoming Something: The Story of Canada Lee New York: Faber and Faber 2004.

Suggested viewing:

Body and Soul. Republic Pictures Home Video, Santa Monica, CA: Distributed by Artisan Entertainment Inc, 1991, DVD.

Cry the Beloved Country. Malibu, CA: Monterey Home Video, 1998. VHS.

Lifeboat. Beverly Hills, CA: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2005. DVD.