Paula Jane Giddings was born on November 16, 1947, in Yonkers, New York, to Virginia I. Stokes and Curtis G. Giddings. Her experiences of growing up in a politically active family, confronting discrimination, and witnessing student-led movements—particularly the Freedom Rides in 1961--led to her quest to understand and write about the dynamics of both oppression and the resistance to it throughout her writing and academic career.

In 1965, Giddings enrolled in Howard University, where she worked on the university's newspaper during her freshman year. She eventually became editor of the university's literary magazine, —which she renamed The Afro-American Review--and was part of a group of students who demanded that the university revise its Eurocentric curriculum to include what is now known as Africana Studies. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1969.

From 1969 to 1972, Giddings worked at Random House, first as a secretary and editorial assistant and later as a copy editor. She then became an associate book editor for the Howard University Press, the first Black university press in the country which was founded by Charles F. Harris--one of the earliest Black editors in mainstream publishing. In 1975, she moved to Paris, France, to cover news in Africa and Europe as the Paris bureau chief for Encore American & Worldwide News. In that same year, she traveled to South Africa, where she interviewed leaders of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, including Winnie Mandela and Robert Sobukwe. Giddings was also a member of the American press corps that accompanied United States President Jimmy Carter on his first multi-nation trip abroad in 1977-1978. After leaving Encore in 1979, she was a contributing and book review editor at and subsequently a free-lance journalist who wrote about national and international issues for , , , (Paris), , and , among other publications.

In 1984, Giddings published her first book, . The book was a pioneering text that documented the role of African-American women in both race and women's movements throughout American history. The following year, Giddings was invited to teach at Spelman College as a distinguished scholar of the United Negro College Fund.

In 1988, Giddings was named the Laurie Chair in Women's Studies at Douglass College/ Rutgers University. That same year, she published , a history of that organization for which she is a member. Subsequently, Giddings was a visiting professor at Princeton University, had an extended fellowship at the National Humanities Center, and in 1996 joined the faculty of Duke University.

In 2001, Giddings accepted a teaching position at Smith College where she was subsequently named the Elizabeth A. Woodson 1922 Professor of Africana Studies. While there she served as the third editor of the peer-reviewed journal, . In 2002 she edited , an anthology of articles on race published by magazine from 1867 to 2000.

Perhaps most notably, Giddings published in 2008. This has become the leading biography of civil rights and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells and has received numerous awards including the 2008 Los Angeles Times prize in Biography. The book was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; the Letitia Woods Brown Book Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians; the Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights; and the 2009 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Nonfiction Literary Award, among others. In addition, it was named a Best Book of 2008 by both the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. Additionally, IDA won the inaugural Duke University John Hope Franklin Research Center Book Award in 2011.

Giddings has earned fellowships from the National Humanities Center and the Guggenheim Foundation. She has chaired the nonfiction panel of the National Book Awards and has Honorary Degrees from Wesleyan University, Bennett College, and Howard University. In 2016, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.