Ottley was born in New York City on August 2, 1906, to Jerome Peter and Beatrice Ottley, the second of their three children.^[1] His parents were immigrants from the Caribbean island country of Grenada.^[2] He attended public schools in the city, where he excelled in basketball, baseball, and track,^[2] and in 1926 he won a track scholarship to St. Bonaventure College in Allegany, New York.^[1][2][4] At St. Bonaventure, he was a writer and cartoonist for the campus newspaper.^[2] In 1928, he transferred to the University of Michigan to concentrate on journalism.^[2] He later studied part-time at St. John's Law School^[1] and Columbia University, both in New York City.^[2][4]

Ottley worked as a journalist for the Amsterdam News from 1931 to 1937.^[1] In 1937, Ottley joined the New York City Writers' Project as an editor.^[1] In 1943 he published New World A-Coming: Inside Black America, which described life for African Americans in Harlem, New York City, in the 1920s and 1930s.^[2][3][4] The book incorporated Ottley's reports from the New York City Writer's Project.^[1] It won the Life in America prize, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and a Peabody Award, and was adapted for a series of radio broadcasts.^[1][2][4] Also the book became the basis for the anthology radio program broadcast on WMAC in New York.^[5]

Ottley became the publicity director of national CIO War Relief Committee in 1943.^[1] He was commissioned as a lieutenant in the US Army in 1944.^[2] During World War II, Ottley reported from Europe for Liberty Magazine, PM, and the Pittsburgh Courier, becoming the first African American war correspondent to cover the war for major newspapers.^[1][2][4] Ottley covered events such as the Normandy Invasion, the hanging of Mussolini, and the Arab–French conflict in Syria.^[1] He also interviewed important personalities like Governor Talmadge of Georgia, and Samuel Green, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.^[1] Ottley also became the first African American to interview a pope when he met with Pope Pius XII in 1945.^[2]

He later worked for the Chicago Tribune and broadcast reports for CBS and BBC radio.^[1]

Ottley's other published works include Black Odyssey: The Story of the Negro in America, 1948;^[6] No Green Pastures, 1951;^[7] and Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of Robert S. Abbot, 1955.^[8] Two were published posthumously: White Marble Lady in 1965,^[9] and The Negro in New York: An Informal Social History, 1626–1940 in 1967.^[10][1]

Ottley died on October 2, 1960, from a heart attack.^[1][2]

• Destination Freedom – a post-WWII anthology radio series airing in Chicago featuring vignettes about Negro history written by Richard Durham

• Ottley, Roi and Huddle, Mark A. Roi Ottley's World War II: The Lost Diary of an African American Journalist (University Press of Kansas, 2011). ISBN 978-0700617692, 978-0700618910, OCLC 681500381
  • Lankford, James R. (Winter 2013). "Book Review: Roi Ottley's World War II: The Lost Diary of an African American Journalist". On Point. 18 (3). Army Historical Foundation: 60. ISSN 2577-1337. JSTOR 26363235. OCLC 7852920490.
  • Book Discussion on Roi Ottley's World War II with Mark Huddle, June 23, 2012 – C-Span

• Savage, Barbara Dianne (1999). "Chapter 6: New World A'Coming and Destination Freedom". Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race 1938–1948. Chapel Hill & London: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 246–270. ISBN 978-0807848043. OCLC 40135343.

• 1944–1945 Radio Series based on Roi Ottley's New World A'Coming on archive.org