Bell was born on May 17, 1903 in Starkville, Mississippi to Jonas Bell and Mary Nichols. The 1910 U.S. Census shows him as the fourth of seven children living with his widowed mother, Mary Nichols, in Sessums Township, just outside Starkville. His brother Fred Bell also played baseball. As a teenager, Bell worked at the creamery at what is now Mississippi State University and at the school’s agricultural experiment station.

At the age of 17, he moved to St. Louis to live with older brothers and attend high school. However, rather than attending night school as planned, Bell spent most of his time playing baseball in the neighborhood. He signed as a knuckleball pitcher with the Compton Hill Cubs, a black semipro baseball team, until the team broke up in August 1921. He played with Compton Hill on Sundays and holidays while he worked for a packing company during the week. For 1922, Bell moved to the East St. Louis Cubs, a semipro team that paid him $20 weekly to pitch on Sundays.

Bell joined the St. Louis Stars of the Negro National League (NNL) as a pitcher in 1922. Bell earned his nickname in his first Negro league season; he was referred to as “Cool” after striking out standout player Oscar Charleston and added “Papa” to the nickname because it sounded better. At first, Bell made only occasional appearances in the outfield. By 1924, at the urging of manager Bill Gatewood, Bell began working on his defensive skills and appearing more in the outfield.

Bell led the Stars to league titles in 1928, 1930, and 1931. While with the Stars, he played alongside close friend and shortstop Willie Wells and first baseman Mule Suttles. He moved to the Detroit Wolves of the East-West League when the NNL disbanded. The Wolves were owned by former Negro league star Cumberland Posey and they jumped to a first-place lead with a 29–13 win-loss record before the league disbanded. Attendance figures had remained too low in the wake of the Great Depression.

Bell bounced to the Kansas City Monarchs and the Mexican winter leagues until finding a home with the Pittsburgh Crawfords in the reorganized NNL. In Pittsburgh, he played with Ted Page and Jimmie Crutchfield to form what is considered by many to have been the best outfield in the Negro leagues. On the 1936 Crawfords team, Bell was one of six players who were subsequently inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Bell left the Crawfords in 1937 when owner Gus Greenlee defaulted on player salaries. Bell, Satchel Paige and other Crawfords players went to the Dominican Republic to play on a team assembled by dictator Rafael Trujillo. Trujillo felt that a baseball championship would strengthen his ruling power and he kept the players under armed supervision. Outside of Negro league players, the club featured Puerto Rican star Petrucho Cepeda, father of future Major League Baseball (MLB) Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda. They were led by Cuban manager Lázaro Salazar, who was later elected to the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame.

Bell came back to the United States in 1942 to play for the Chicago American Giants of the Negro American League. He joined the Homestead Grays in the NNL in 1943. The Grays won league championships in Bell’s first two seasons. In an attempt at a third consecutive title in 1945, the Grays lost in the league’s World Series. The 43-year-old hit .396 for the 1946 Grays. Bell became a player-manager for Negro league farm teams until 1950. He finished his Negro league career with a .341 batting average; he hit .391 in exhibitions against MLB players. Bell was a part-time scout for the St. Louis Browns from 1951 to 1954, when the team moved to Baltimore.

After Bell’s playing and managing days were over, Bell lived in an old red-brick apartment in St. Louis. He worked as a scout for the St. Louis Browns for four years, then he served as a security officer and custodian at St. Louis City Hall until 1970. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974. His Hall of Fame plaque highlights the fact that Bell’s contemporaries regarded him as the fastest runner on the base paths. He was the fifth Negro league player inducted into the Hall of Fame. Negro league players Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Monte Irvin and Buck Leonard were inducted between 1971 and 1973.

Bell suffered a heart attack and he died at Saint Louis University Hospital on March 7, 1991; his wife Clara had died a few weeks earlier. In his honor, Dickson Street, on which he lived, was renamed James “Cool Papa” Bell Avenue. He was also inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. Cool Papa Bell Drive is the road leading into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Museum in Jackson, of which he is a member. The St. Louis Cardinals have recognized Bell’s contributions by erecting a bronze statue of him outside Busch Stadium along with other Hall of Fame St. Louis baseball stars, including Stan Musial, Lou Brock and Bob Gibson.

References to Bell appeared in Hanging Curve by Troy Soos, a 1999 novel about the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. He was also noted in the 1994 movie Cobb, in which Ty Cobb, played by Tommy Lee Jones, is chided for being a lesser player than Bell. His character makes a brief appearance in the 2009 feature film The Perfect Game, encouraging and aiding the 1957 Little League World Series champion team from Monterrey, Mexico; the role is played by Lou Gossett Jr.

In 1999, Bell was ranked 66th on The Sporting News list of Baseball’s Greatest Players, one of five players so honored who played all or most of his career in the Negro leagues, and was nominated for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.

He was named to the Washington Nationals Ring of Honor for his “significant contribution to the game of baseball in Washington, D.C” as part of the Homestead Grays on August 10, 2010.