The family moved to Atlanta after his father became President of Morris Brown College and Lewis attended Booker T. Washington High School in his junior year.

He gained early admission at age fifteen to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1956.

[3][4] In 1961–1962, Lewis served in the United States Army as a psychiatric technician and private first class in Landstuhl, Germany.

Du Bois and finished writing The Race to Fashoda: European Colonialism and African Resistance in the Scramble for Africa during his 18-year tenure.

In spring semester 2001, Lewis served as distinguished visiting professor in Harvard's history department.

Lewis is the author of the first academic biography of Martin Luther King Jr., which was published in 1970, less than two years after the subject's assassination.

Lewis appeared as a historical expert in the 1999 film New York: A Documentary Film, directed by Ric Burns for PBS and The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross 2013 documentary miniseries written and presented by Henry Louis Gates Jr. for PBS.

Lewis delivered the inaugural convocation lecture at New York University Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates on September 19, 2010.