Donna L. Avery was born on a dirt road in Augusta, GA during the height of Jim Crow racism in America. However, she was surrounded by so much love and light, that she didn’t let all of the odds that America tried to stack up against her and her people stop her. She was a high-achieving student, even skipping the second grade. She was taught much oral history by her great-grandfather, James Ransom Oglesby, and her great-grandmother, Francis Oglesby, and who was born in 1874. She was showered with love by her grandmother Ethel Davis, and adored by her mother, Ruby Madalion.