Lisle Carter, Jr

Who was Lisle Carter, Jr?

Lisle C. Carter, Jr., a prominent administrator who worked for civic organizations, educational institutions and the federal government, was the first President of the University of the District of Columbia.

Carter was born in New York City and spent most of his childhood in Barbados. His father, Lisle Carter, Sr., was a prominent Harlem dentist, and his mother, Eunice Carter, was the first black woman district attorney in the state of New York. He graduated from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, then served in the Army for two years before receiving a law degree from St. John's University in New York.

Carter was Executive Director of the Washington Urban League in the mid-1950s, and later worked for the National Urban League in New York. He entered government as a Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare under the Kennedy Administration. He later became an Assistant Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, and then became Assistant Secretary of HEW under the Johnson Administration, becoming one of the highest-ranking African Americans in that department before leaving in 1968.

He later became a Vice President at Cornell University, and spent three years as Chancellor of the Atlanta University Center, a consortium of historically black colleges in downtown Atlanta, before becoming President of UDC in 1977.