This post was originally published on Michigan Chronicle
By Adell Henderson
Spelman College honored Spike Lee’s family by renaming the College’s Admissions Office in honor of the well-known film director’s grandmother Zimmie Reatha Shelton (Class of 1929) and mother Jacquelyn Shelton Lee (Class of 1954). Lee and his wife Tonya Lewis Lee participated in the ceremony, along with Spelman College President Dr. Helene Gayle, faculty, students and staff.
“This is an honor that I’m here with Tonya, and it’s a great moment for the Lee family,” the Academy Award winning screenwriter explains. He then went on to breakdown his rich Spelman/Morehouse College lineage. “My grandmother went for four years of high school at Spelman, then four years of college, finished in 1929. My mother finished in 1954. My father was a freshmen when Martin Luther King, Jr. was a senior, and Martin Luther King lll and I were classmates, class of ‘79.”