Randy Mills was born in 1930 in rural North Carolina. A grandson of a tobacco farmer, his family raised and farmed all of their own food. In his teens, he and his brother joined his already-settled parents in New York City. He got work there at his first job; selling at a fruit stand. As an adult, Mills married in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. The couple's first home at 363 New York Avenue was robbed, so they moved to St. John's Place and Underhill Avenue, and later Rogers Avenue and Crown Street. Mills is a father to two daughters and a son, and worked six or seven days a week as a truck driver. At the time of the interview in 2010, he was residing at the Marcus Garvey Nursing Home.