Henry H. Mitchell was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1919. He was the grandson of Rev. H. H. Mitchell, pastor of Fifth Street Baptist Church in Richmond during the 1880s, and president of the Virginia Baptist State Convention from 1890 to 1899. Henry Mitchell has written five books and coauthored or edited several others. He earned a B.A. from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary in New York, an M.A. from California State University at Fresno, and a Th.D. from the School of Theology at Claremont. He was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1944. With his wife, Ella, also an ordained minister, Mitchell founded the Ecumenical Center for Black Church Studies in Los Angeles. He has taught at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, and the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. In 1982, he was named dean of Virginia Union's School of Theology, a post he held for four years.

The Mitchell's had four children, three of whom are living. Mitchell's books include "Recovery of Preaching" (1977), "Black Preaching" (1979), "Black Preaching, the Recovery of Powerful Art" (1991), "Celebration and Experience in Preaching" (1994), and "Together for Good, Lessons from 55 Years of Marriage" (1999).