Fred W. Ross was born August 23, 1910 in San Francisco to Fred W. and Daisy C. Ross. He grew up in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles and attended Belmont High School until 1929. An English literature and social science major, he graduated from the University of Southern California in 1937.

Giving up his original plan to become a teacher because he could not find a job during the Depression, Ross became a caseworker with the state relief administration. In 1939 he became the manager of the Arvin Migratory Labor Camp near Bakersfield, the same camp John Steinbeck drew on to write The Grapes of Wrath. Ross encouraged the inhabitants to organize themselves. In 1941 he began to work for the War Relocation Authority helping Japanese American internees leave the camps and obtain jobs and housing.

In 1946 Ross went to work for the American Council on Race Relations to promote "Councils for Civic Unity" in California in response to the racial tensions that had surfaced during the war. The eight Hispanic Unity Leagues Ross organized fought segregation in schools and elsewhere. From 1947 to 1952 he worked for Saul Alinsky and the Industrial Areas Foundation. With their support Ross established the first Community Service Organization in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles. In 1952 he met Cesar Chavez, then a young man in San Jose, and hired him. Both men founded 22 CSO chapters throughout California in the 1950's. As a decades-long mentor, Ross had a strong influence on Chavez, who remembered that "as time went on, Fred became sort of my hero. I saw him organize and I wanted to learn."

In 1964 Ross was hired by the National Presbyterian Church to establish a community self-help group in Guadalupe, Arizona, a poor small town, populated by Yaqui Indians and Mexican Americans, where the church owned much property. The following year, 1965-66, Ross taught community organizing at Syracuse University in the first course of its kind. In 1966 Ross began his work with Cesar Chavez's UFW, training hundreds of organizers. He organized many well-known strikes and boycotts, among them the Giumarra strike of 1967, the grape boycott of 1968, the lettuce strikes of 1970 and 1973, and the Gallo wine boycott of 1973.

In 1978 Ross directed Jerry Brown's campaign for governor of California. Ross helped to organize the United Domestic Workers of America and the 1979 Chiquita Banana Boycott. In 1984 he became involved with Nuclear Freeze, Jobs with Peace, CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador). He also worked with the anti-interventionist group Neighbor to Neighbor with his son, Fred., Jr .

Ross developed and taught organizing techniques such as the house meeting. This work is well-documented in the Papers. In 1989 Neighbor to Neighbor published Ross' Axioms for Organizers as a booklet. The same year, El Taller Grafico press (UFW) pubished Ross' first book, Conquering Goliath: Cesar Chavez at the Beginning.

In 1937 Ross married Yvonne Gregg; they divorced shortly after the birth of their son, Robert, in 1940. Ross married Frances Gibson in 1943, and they had three children, Julia, Fred, Jr., and Rob. Fred Ross died on September 27, 1992.