[1] He was born to parents Pearl Eugenia Eskew and John Hayes Bankhead, and was the eldest of six children.
[3] His early education was in a one-room Rosenwald School where his mother taught in Cherokee County, South Carolina.
Instead he enrolled in 1937 at Voorhees University in Denmark, South Carolina; and was able to support his education with work as a barber.
[3] Bankhead tried to work with architect Paul Revere Williams, but he was rejected for being too skilled for an entry level role.
[3] By the 1950s, Bankhead had his own architecture firm, and one of his earliest works was an apartment building on Washington Boulevard.