[3] John Louis Wilson Jr. was born on January 24, 1898, in Meridian, Mississippi into an African American family.
[5] From 1920 to 1923, he worked as a math teacher and football coach at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas.
[4] He had to delay his studies due to financial issues and from 1924 until 1926, Wilson worked as a draftsman for architect Vertner Woodson Tandy.
[4] Wilson began his architectural career in 1929, with the New York City Board of Transportation and on September 24, 1930, he became a registered architect in the state.
[4] In the 1930s, Wilson was appointed by mayor Fiorello La Guardia to join the architecture team for the design of the Harlem River Houses, but he faced racism and he was not made one of a lead architects.
[3][7] In the mid-1950's, Wilson was a founding president of the Council for Advancement of Negroes in Architecture (NACA), which was merged in 1967 with the American Institute of Architects (AIA).