Angeline Fleming was born in Indianola, Mississippi in 1919. Raised in a two-room house with a dirt floor, Angeline picked cotton before receiving her teaching certificate, and she taught for a year in the segregated schools of rural Mississippi. During the war, she moved to Detroit with her brothers, where she got work as a riveter on the B-29 bomber for the Ford Motor Company. In the factory, Angeline noticed that most people would self-segregate working groups. She later married and followed her husband to California where he worked in the shipyards, but she was unable to get a high paying factory job there because of prejudice towards black people at that time. She and her husband returned to Detroit, Michigan in 1943. On her 90th birthday, the city of Detroit honored Angeline for her work as a "Detroit Rosie the Riveter."