Minister, civil rights activist, and business owner, Joseph Everhart Boone was the son of the late John L. and Mattie Roberts Boone. He was raised in the Simpson Road community of Atlanta, Georgia and married an Atlanta educator, Althea Williams (Selma). They had two daughters, Jolaunda and Andrea.

Joseph Boone attended high school at Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta Georgia and continued his education at Houston Tillotson College (1950), Austin, Texas, where he received a Bachelor of Science Degree. He later earned a Bachelor of Divinity from Gammon Theological Seminary.

As a student, Joseph Boone was active in sports. He was a member of the Washington High School Bulldog football team and the captain of the Houston Tillotson College football team. Before continuing his college career at Gammon Theological Seminary, he played professional football with the New York Brown Bombers, the Negro World's Football League Champions, 1943 -1947. He was also the assistant football coach at Atlanta’s Carver High School.

Reverend Joseph E. Boone retired as a minister of the United Church of Christ. He was the pastor of the First Congregational Church, in Anniston, Alabama, where he organized the first Selective Buying Campaign in Alabama. He was also pastor of Rush Memorial Church in Atlanta, Georgia, during his tenure the Committee on Human Rights used the church as its headquarters and he became a central organizer of the Atlanta Movement in the early 1960s where he often worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, John Lewis and Andrew Young. The Atlanta Movement led to the integration of lunch counters and department stores in the city of Atlanta.

Boone also served a president of the Anniston Branch of the NAACP, president of the Calhoun County Voters League, and a member of Alabama council for Human Relations. Also, during the sixties, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr named Joseph Boone as the chief negotiator of Operation Breadbasket, an organization dedicated to improving the economic conditions of black communities across the United States.

Even though he continued as a civil rights leader, Joseph Boone was the director of the P.J. Woods Center for the Blind and Senior Citizens. Dr. P. J. Woods along with others founded the center, which was originally known as the Metropolitan Atlanta Association for the Colored Blind. Dr. Woods was also an original instructor for the center. The name of the center changed in 1973 to honor Woods (after his death). As the director, Boone organized a meaningful facility for the handicap and established a drug therapy program. The center eventually became known as the P.J. Woods Center for Social Justice, The Blind and the Elderly.

Boone was the Director of the Metropolitan Atlanta Summit Leadership Congress Inc. (MASLC) which was organized as a civil rights organization. During this tenure, Boone negotiated with the Atlanta Public School Committee for the desegregation of the Atlanta Public School system. He was also selected by Coretta Scott King to organize the first leg of the Poor People’s Campaign from Atlanta.

Reverend Joseph Boone was a successful businessman. He was the chairman of P.J. Wood s Plastics, Inc., B. D. & O. Associates, Inc., Food Alliance, Inc. and South Georgia Enterprises Companies. Most of these companies engaged in manufacturing and distributing plastics, apparel, paint, luggage and meats to major corporations.