Ebon Dooley was born Leon Thomas Hale, January 25, 1942, in Milan, Tennessee, the oldest child of the three children of Leon and Beatrice Hale of the small farming community of Milan, Tennessee. Son of a school-teacher and the grandchild of middle-class farmers, he was educated in the Milan, Tennessee public schools. After the 10th grade he enrolled in Nashville’s Fisk University on an early entrant scholarship. He chose to go by the name ‘Ebon’ while in Fisk University Nashville, Tennessee where he was the managing editor of the Fisk literary magazine and newspaper. Ebon, after graduation from Fisk University Nashville, Tennessee, entered Columbia Law School in New York City as a regional honors scholar in 1963. After graduation in 1967 he went to Chicago as a VISTA legal volunteer. While in Chicago he joined the OBAC Writers Workshop (Organization for Black American Culture) founded in 1967. In 1968 his book, “Revolution: A Poem” was published.

After Chicago, Ebon moved to Atlanta in 1969 to run the Timbuku and Uhuru bookstores, each of which specialized in Afro-American works, until 1974. His most creative works were in the management of organizations that encouraged artistic and social expression. The following are some of the organizations he was affiliated with: The Neighborhood Art Center; The Arts Exchange; Atlanta’s Radio Free Georgia (WRFG) Community Radio Station, where he served as president of the Board of Directors among many other positions, such as Broadcasting Director; The Little Five Point Community Center, the Pan African Conference, and the Board of Directors of Pacifica News. He was on the Board of Directors of the Southern Education Program, formed to recruit black teachers from the North for local colleges. He was involved in the establishment of the Dunbar Center, the Atlanta Center for Black Arts. In 1975, as a CETA worker, he began teaching at Atlanta’s Neighborhood Arts Center. Ebon Dooley passed away, October 12, 2006.