William "Bill" Tuttle was born in Detroit, Michigan on October 7, 1937 to Dr. William Tuttle Sr., a thoracic surgeon, and Mrs. Geneva Duvall Tuttle. He received his B.A. in History from Denison University in 1959 and immediately went into service in the Air Force for three years.

From the University of Wisconsin, Tuttle earned his MA in History in 1964 and a PhD three years later, also in History. In 1967 he joined the faculty in the History Department at the University of Kansas (KU). He became an Associate Professor of History in 1970 and a full Professor of History in 1975. In 2000 he joined the American Studies Department at KU, where he remained until his retirement in 2008.

Among Tuttle's numerous publications are Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (1970, 1996) and Daddy's Gone to War (1993). He also co-authored People and a Nation with David M. Katzman and Mary Beth Norton.

For his teaching, Tuttle received the 1998 W.T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence, the H.O.P.E. Teaching Award from the Class of 2001, and the Chancellor's Club Career Teaching Award in 2004. He was also honored by KU in 2004 with the Higuchi Award and the Balfour S. Jeffrey Award for Achievement in the Humanities and Social Sciences. During his career, Tuttle received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the American Learned Societies, the Institute of Southern History, Johns Hopkins University, the Charles Warren Center, Harvard University, and the Stanford Humanities Center.