Merton Daniel Simpson was born in Charleston, South Carolina. During his adolescence, he was taught how to paint and introduced to abstract art by William Halsey and Jean Robertson Fleming, but he was not allowed to take art classes because of segregation in the South. He attended Burke High School in Charleston (as the first African American to receive a prestigious five-year fellowship from the Charleston Scientific and Cultural Education fund), graduated in 1949 and left for New York City. He took classes at NYU and Cooper Union and worked in a frame shop, where he met many well-known artists.