She then joined a traveling Black show, the Tennessee Ten, and in 1917 she met the dance director and acrobatic dancer Ulysses "Slow Kid" Thompson (1888–1990), to whom she would be married from 1921 until her death.

[3] After Shuffle Along, Lew Leslie, a white promoter, hired Mills and Thompson to appear nightly at the Plantation Club.

The revue featured Mills and a wide range of Black artists, including visiting performers such as Paul Robeson.

[6][7] In 1924 she headlined at the Palace Theatre, and became an international star with the hit show Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1926 at the Les Ambassadeurs in Paris, in Ostend and the London Pavilion in 1926.

The New York Times reported that more than 10,000 people visited the funeral home to pay their respects;[12] thousands attended her funeral, including James Weldon Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and stars of the stage, vaudeville and dance.

Honorary pall bearers including singers Ethel Waters, Cora Green, and Lottie Gee, all of whom had performed with Mills.

[citation needed] Her widower, Ulysses Thompson, a native of Prescott, Arkansas, was a dancer and comedian, having learned his trade in the world of circuses and travelling medicine shows in the early years of the century.

On her death Lambert immediately wrote the piano piece Elegaic Blues in tribute, orchestrating it the following year.

Mills was pictured on a postage stamp issued by the island of Grenada in honor of "The Birth of the Silver Screen".

Mills is referenced in the 2023 video game Marvel's Spider-Man 2, with a picture of her and a pair of her shoes appearing in a musical heritage museum.