Biography: Ashton Springer Jr. was born in Manhattan. He attended Ohio State University and became a social worker in the Bronx. He was a producer or co-producer of nearly a dozen Broadway shows in the 1970s and early 1980s. He is widely credited with helping to bring theater by and about African-Americans to Broadway stages, and helping to bring late-20th-century African-American audiences to Broadway. He married Myra Burns, with whom he had his son, Caz.

Trivia:
He owned a laundry business in Jackson Heights, Queens.
The marquees of Broadway theaters were dimmed in his honor on July 24, 2013.