Helen Jackson Lee was born in Richmond, Virginia, July 23, 1908, the daughter of the late Charles Neason and Nannie Brisby Jackson.  She is a graduate of Virginia State (now Virginia State University) at Petersburg, Virginia.  She holds a degree of Bachelor of Arts in English and French- After graduation she taught for two years (1930-1932) at Fauquier Training School in Irwin, Virginia.  She received her business training at Rider College, Trenton, New Jersey.  Prior to moving to Trenton in 1940 she worked as a newspaper reporter and feature writer for two weekly newspapers in Philadelphia. In Trenton she became the Trenton correspondent for the New Jersey edition of the Afro American.

Nigger in the Window, the autobiography Lee wrote after retiring from 31 years in state government at age 65, chronicles her quest for equity as a black state employee. Lee takes her reader from her first job with the NJ.  Unemployment Compensation Commission (UCC), from 1942 to 1947, as "one of the dozen Negro employees set apart ... from the others at UCC," through the civil service examinations that resulted in no jobs, the scores of less qualified employees who received the promotions she was due (over two decades as a senior clerk-stenographer with the NJ. Department of Institutions and Agencies), the harassment for being "too outspoken”, during the McCarthy era, and all of the other realities of northern institutionalized racism. 

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