Work was born to formerly enslaved parents in Iredell County, North Carolina, and moved in 1867 to Cairo, Illinois, where his father pursued farming.

While there, he would begin the Negro Year Book, a publication that incorporated his periodic summation of lynching reports, which resulted in the Tuskegee Institute becoming one of the most quoted and undisputed sources on this form of racial violence.

[4] According to Work's biographer, these resources were the largest of their kind in an era when scholarship by and about black Americans was highly inaccessible, and overlooked or ignored by most academics in the US.

It brought together scholars, activists, and editors to refute racist scholarship, promote black claims to individual, social, and political equality, and publish the history and sociology of African American life.

publication that compiled facts, sociological data, and directories of distinguished people surrounding the current state of black progress in the US since emancipation.

The Negro Year Book also for a time incorporated his periodic summation of lynching reports, which were so thoroughly compiled that the Tuskegee Institute became one of the most quoted and undisputed sources on this form of racial violence.