Julian Hudson Mayfield was born on June 6, 1928, in Greer, South Carolina, and was raised from the age of five in Washington, D.C.[1] He attended Paul Laurence Dunbar High School and while there he decided on being a writer as a career.

He developed the role of Absalom Kumalo for the Kurt Weil musical Lost in the Stars during 1949–50, before producing his own play Fire in 1951 and directing Ossie Davis's Alice in Wonder in 1952.

Along with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Alice Childress, Rosa Guy, Audre Lorde, John O. Killens, Sarah E. Wright, William Branch, Sidney Poitier, and Loften Mitchell, Mayfield became an important figure in the 'Black Cultural Left'.

[2] This group was associated with the African-American singer and political activist Paul Robeson and was composed of actors, writers and artists who believed that art was a key component of the struggle for civil rights.

In 1955, Mayfield became a target of FBI surveillance due to his association with members of the Communist Party in New York, including Paul Robeson and Louis Burnham, and his role in the Committee for the Negro in the Arts (CNA).

Visiting Cuba at the invitation of Fidel Castro in July 1960, he accompanied Cordero, LeRoi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka), Sarah E. Wright and Robert F. Williams to Oriente ,where they celebrated the anniversary of the attack on the Moncada Barracks and the birth of the Movimiento 26 de Julio.

Remembering the Stegalls from an earlier white supremacist demonstration, and convinced they had come to his street to prepare for a later attack, Williams held the couple at gunpoint and brought them to his house.

[4] The FBI, which had previously refused to take action against the violence perpetuated by white citizens of Monroe, charged Williams with kidnapping and named Mayfield and fellow activist Mae Mallory as material witnesses.

He founded the African Review,[5] a bimonthly journal that featured articles by African-descended intellectuals including Bessie Head, Preston King, and Neville Dawes, analyzing the economic and social issues facing decolonizing Africa.