Charles Freeman Lee, was born in New York City on August 13, 1927 the only son of three children born to Louella Simpson Lee and Charles Henry Lee. Freeman, as he was always known, grew up with his sisters, Mary Lee White and Jane Lee Ball in Springfield and Wilberforce, Ohio with their Grandma Mary and their father Charles Snr., after the death of their mother in childbirth.
Although Freeman graduated in 1948 with a B.Sc. in Biology from Central State College, he had actually attended Wilberforce University: Central State College from which he graduated, formally dissociated from Wilberforce University in the 1940s and became an independent institution, issuing its own degrees.