Staples was born in 1951 in Chester, Pennsylvania, the oldest of nine children. His parents moved from rural Virginia to Chester, as part of the Great Migration of southern blacks to industrial cities in the North. His father was a truck driver and his mother a homemaker. By the time Staples was in the 8th grade, his family had moved within Chester seven times, often due to their inability to pay the rent. His family had no money for tuition, his grades were average, and he had taken only a few high-level academic courses in high school. The expectation was that he would go straight to work, most likely at one of the shipyards in Chester.