Raymond Henderson was born in 1948 in Washington, D.C., and grew up in different parts of the city, though mostly in Anacostia. He attended Our Lady of Perpetual Help Elementary School, Davis Elementary School, Plummer Elementary School, Sousa Junior High School, Kelly Miller Junior High School, Gordon Junior High School, and Cardozo Senior High School. In 1966 Henderson dropped out of high school, joined the Marine Corps, and was sent to fight in Vietnam. Upon his return, he earned his GED and enrolled in Federal City College (now the University of the District of Columbia) in 1970. Henderson developed a political consciousness while serving in Vietnam and became involved in student activism while at Federal City College. He was a writer and editor for the student newspapers, along with other movement newspapers, and founded a student organization, the Black Jaguars, modeled on the Black Panthers. Henderson was part of a delegation of black college students who visited Cuba in 1974, where they met with people involved in liberation movements all over the world. After graduating from Federal City College, where he majored in political science, Henderson studied for a masters degree in political science at Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he focused on China. After struggles with post traumatic stress disorder and drug addiction, Henderson went back to graduate school for photography in 1996. Today he lives in Alexandria, Virginia, and works as a photographer.