Regina Goodwin was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and raised in Tulsa's historic Greenwood District, which is commonly known as Black Wall Street. She is a descendant of a survivor of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, and is the daughter of Edward Goodwin, Jr. and the granddaughter of Edward L. Goodwin, both of whom were long time editors of "The Oklahoma Eagle", Oklahoma's longest-running Black-owned newspaper.