Her most famous book is This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, a 1993 biography of the civil rights leader.
Mills was born in Washington, D.C. She recalled that although she was shy as a child, when she saw May Craig, the Maine newspaper correspondent, on Meet The Press, she figured that asking questions of newsmakers would be a good line of work for her.
She became a broadcast news writer for United Press International in Chicago, then covered education and child welfare for the Baltimore Evening Sun.
After a Professional Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University,[3] she joined the Los Angeles Times in 1978 and became one of the first women (and often the only one) on its editorial board.
"[This quote needs a citation] Feminist scholar Carolyn G. Heilbrun said "Reading A Place in the News was like seeing my life as a professional woman pass before my eyes.
She has provided a history that helps us to understand the choices made by so many black men and women of Hamer's generation, who, unwilling to leave the South they grew up in, somehow found the courage to join a movement in which they risked everything.
"[This quote needs a citation] Her other books included From Pocahontas to Power Suits: Everything You Need to Know About Women's History in America (1995) and Changing Channels: The Civil Rights Case That Transformed Television, (2004), the story of the successful challenge of the Jackson, Mississippi, TV station that failed to cover the civil rights movement.