Dolores Preston Turner was born in Ann Arbor in the early 1940s, and her family lived in a small historically Black neighborhood on Woodlawn Avenue. She graduated from Ann Arbor High School, where she met her future husband, James Turner.

Joan Dickson was born in 1929 in Omaha, Nebraska. Although her father had a secure job with AT&T, she remembers the severe effects of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. After attending college in Iowa, she got married and moved to Waterloo, Iowa. She raised four children and was active in volunteering throughout her life. After divorcing her first husband in 1990, she remarried and moved to Michigan. She enjoys traveling and taking art classes.