She was an early member of the Freedom Quilting Bee, which was an alternative economic organization created in 1966 to raise the socio-economic status of African-American communities in Alabama.

Lucy and her siblings worked the fields growing corn, peas, potatoes, peanuts, and cotton[3] to earn a meager living.

[5][6] She retired at age 69, after her mother became ill.[3] Like many women in Gee's Bend, Mingo squeezed in quilting time after completing work at her other jobs.

Their quilts were sold across the United States and brought much-needed money back to the Gee's Bend economy.

Estelle Witherspoon, the Bee's first manager, and Mingo led a twelve-woman team that produced a Chestnut Bud quilt, sofa cover, and drapes for CBS chairman William S. Paley and his wife.

Members of the FQB heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak in Gee's Bend in 1965 and many of them, including Mingo, were inspired to register to vote as a result.

[7] The Bee was founded in part to provide employment to women who lost work when they took a stand for civil rights and registered to vote, which happened to Mingo.

[9] The Freedom Quilting Bee's numbers declined in the 1990s due to an aging membership, plus weather damage to their community space.

In her early years, Mingo frequently used old denim and cotton shirts worn during field work as material for her quilts.

"[4] The attention and praise the Gee's Bend Collective members received from the art world as the 2002 exhibit toured the country surprised them.

[12] In 2006, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Tinwood Alliance mounted a second exhibition titled "Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt" that included works by Mingo.

[4] Mingo was one of two Gee's Bend Collective quilt makers featured in a 2014 episode titled "Industry" of the PBS television series Craft in America.