Louise Mays was born Amanda Louise Potts on June 2, 1914, in Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated from Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1930, and was a member of the National Honors Society. Potts attended Tuskegee Institute in Alabama where she graduated magna cum laude in 1940. During her college years, Potts was a member of the KI YI Social Club, the Campus Digest Staff, the Associated Women Students, and the staff of the 1940 Tuskeana.

Following her graduation from Tuskegee, Potts went to Detroit, Michigan, where she was employed by the Department of Water Supply. From 1944-45, Potts was employed as a library assistant in the Department of Labor's Women's Bureau in Washington, D. C. In 1947, Potts completed a course in Medical Technology at the City of Chicago Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium's School of Laboratory Technology where she earned her certification as MT/ASCP. Potts was employed as Supervisor of the Student Health Laboratory at Billings Hospital, University of Chicago, until 1955 when she enrolled in the graduate Social Work program at the university. Potts earned her M.A. in Social Work from the University of Chicago in 1957.

In 1959, Potts moved to Des Moines, Iowa, after accepting a position with the Des Moines Child Guidance Center as a psychiatric social worker. Potts spent the next twenty years as a social worker in Des Moines, specializing in children from distressed families and those with speech and hearing disabilities.

On July 29, 1960, Potts married Everett A. Mays. The marriage ended in divorce, but Mays remained close to her two stepchildren, Everett, Jr. and Evanette.

From 1972-79, Mays served as both a professor and director of the Des Moines Educational Center of the University of Iowa School of Social Work. She also served as a lecturer in the Drake University Department of Sociology in Des Moines from 1971-76. Following her retirement, Mays continued to work as a social worker in Des Moines, offering her services to the Family Counseling Center, the Lutheran Social Services, and the Department of Social Services. Mays was an active volunteer serving on the Adult Education Advisory Council, the Planned Parenthood Board, the Des Moines Human Rights Commission, several Greater United Way advisory boards, and multiple YWCA committees, to name but a few of her volunteer activities.

Following a stroke in 1981, Mays turned her attention to elderly concerns becoming an active volunteer in the Wesley-Methodist Adult Day Care Center, the "Friendly Visitor" program at Iowa Methodist Medical Center, the Stroke Partnership Program and Home Health Care. In addition to her many volunteer activities and her professional life, Mays began expressing herself in letters to the editors of the Des Moines Register newspaper in 1972, as well as to Iowa's governors. Mays was honored by both the newspaper and Governors Robert Ray and Terry Branstad for her civic participation.