William Mobile Ashby was born October 15, 1889, in Carter's Grove, Virginia. Ashby graduated from Yale University with a degree in divinity in 1916 and came to Durham shortly after for a teaching job at the National Training School (now NCCU). He remained at the school only a short time, registering for the draft in Durham in June 1917 before moving to Newark, New Jersey, to embark on a long career of social work and activism. Much of his life is detailed in his autobiography Tales Without Hate.