Spike Lee was born Shelton Jackson Lee on March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia. At a very young age, he moved from pre-civil rights Georgia, to Brooklyn, New York. Lee came from an artistic, education-grounded background.
Lee went on to make his landmark film, Do the Right Thing (1989), a movie based specifically on his own neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.
Beyond his filmmaking work, Spike serves as a master teacher of film at the Tisch School of the Arts and Harvard University.
He has directed four films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: “She's Gotta Have It” (1986), “Do the Right Thing” (1989), “Malcolm X” (1992) and “4 Little Girls” (1997).
On February 25, 2019, Spike Lee won his first Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay award for “BlacKkKlansman.” Just one day earlier, Spike received a star in the sky named after him (see above). The "buy a star" Packages were offered in the Oscar gifting suite.
Spike Lee
Pisces RA 0h 33m 18.18s D 18° 36' 34.17"
February 24, 2019