Jackie Ormes was born Zelda Mavin Jackson on August 1, 1911, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to parents William Winfield Jackson and Mary Brown Jackson. Her father William, the owner of a printing company and movie theater proprietor, was killed in an automobile accident in 1917. This resulted in the then six-year old Jackie and her older sister Dolores being placed in the care of their aunt and uncle for a brief period of time. Eventually, Jackie's mother remarried and the family relocated to the nearby city of Monongahela. Ormes described the suburb in a 1985 interview for the "Chicago Reader" as "spread out and simple. Nothing momentous ever happens here." She graduated from high school in Monongahela in 1930.