Harold Lyle Nix was born on September 10, 1920 to Walter Scott Nix Sr. and Mary Elizabeth Lyle in Cherokee County, Georgia. In his memoir, Nix writes that the town he grew up in was then known as Batesville and that his father ran a store there.

Nix attended West Georgia College as a National Youth Administration (NYA) agricultural student from 1940 to 1942. Nix met his first wife, Ruth Blaylock, while attending West Georgia and the two were married shortly after graduation on July 4, 1942. Throughout their marriage, they had two children: Alice and Allen.

On October 2, 1942, soon after marrying Ruth, Nix enlisted in the United States Navy where he was briefly stationed at Pearl Harbor from August to December 1945. He was released from duty in December 1945 and immediately enrolled at the University of Georgia where he obtained a B.S.A. in Agriculture in 1947 and a M.Ed. in 1950. Upon receiving his degrees, Nix taught as an agricultural teacher at Fayette County High and Newman High. He then moved his family to Louisiana so he could attended Louisiana State University. In 1960 Nix received a Ph.D. in Sociology.

After obtaining a doctorate degree, Nix taught at Auburn before accepting a position at Georgia State and then the University of Georgia. He retired from UGA as a Professor Emeritus in 1982.

On January 25, 1975, two years after the death of his first wife Ruth, Nix married Martha Yon. It was Martha who helped Nix type his memoir in the late 1990s. They remained married until his death on August 6, 2003.