Isaiah Montgomery was born in Smithville, North Carolina, in 1948 to African American parents. He lived with his grandparents in Spartanburg, South Carolina, until the age of six. At that time he moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn to join his parents, who had migrated to New York several years earlier. In 1963 his family bought a home and moved to 548 Hinsdale Street in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he attended Franklin K. Lane High School. Montgomery served in the Vietnam War and then spent much of his adult life employed as a corrections officer. He married, had two children, and continues to live in East New York on Newport Street, where he is a member of a community garden and the East New York Farms! Project.