Charles Norman Mills was an African-American artist whose paintings appeared on canvas and as murals on neighborhood walls, focusing on events in African-American history and culture. His work Wall of History, a mural depicting centuries of African-American history, located at the entrance to downtown Fort Lauderdale's Sistrunk Boulevard, has been called his greatest achievement. Mills was born on December 14, 1920, in New York City and grew up in Harlem. He attended an arts high school in Manhattan. As a youth, Mills learned about his roots through his frequent visits to a collection of books on African-American culture and history located on the second floor of a building on 135th Street, a collection that was later placed in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Mills served in the United States Army and after completing his military service worked as a medical illustrator at the VA Medical Center in Brooklyn. This was a position that his daughter described as having "brought out the art in him" and Mills would go on to spend two decades designing and illustrating medical books. 

December 14th, 1920 in (Age 103)