[4] Shirley Ann Redd was born on June 11, 1937 in Winding Gulf, West Virginia.
[5] When she was young her parents divorced, which caused her to move with her mother in order for her mother to find work; together they moved to Beckley, West Virginia; Harlem, New York City; Cambridge, Massachusetts, and eventually settle down in Berkeley, California.
[5] From 1962 until 1963, she worked as a Spanish teacher at the Ravenswood City School District in East Palo Alto.
[5] Her doctorate degree was awarded in 1979 in education, with a focus on language acquisition for bilingual and bidialectical students.
[5] From 1979 to 1980, she moved to Nashville, to hold an adjunct professor role at the Vanderbilt Peabody College of Education and Human Development.
[5] This was followed by executive director role at the United Methodist Church's Black College Fund from 1986 to 1991, and a promotion to assistant general secretary in 1992.
[10] Files of Lewis’s work with the United Methodist Church Black College Fund are located in Nashville, Tennessee.