On June 30, 1966, Michael Gerard Tyson was born in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, New York City. His older brother Rodney was born in 1961, and his older sister Denise passed away in February 1990 at the age of 24 from a heart attack. Tyson's mother was characterized as a promiscuous individual who may have been a prostitute. She was born in Charlottesville, Virginia. On his birth certificate, Tyson's biological father is identified as "Purcell Tyson," a "humble cab driver" from Jamaica; nevertheless, the man Tyson had known as his father was a pimp by the name of Jimmy Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick was from Grier Town, North Carolina, (a predominantly black neighborhood that was annexed by the city of Charlotte), where he was one of the neighborhood's top baseball players. Kirkpatrick married and had a son, Tyson's half-brother Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick, who would help to integrate Charlotte high school football in 1965. In 1959, Jimmy Kirkpatrick left his family and moved to Brooklyn, where he met Tyson's mother, Lorna Mae (Smith) Tyson. Kirkpatrick frequented pool halls, gambled and hung out on the streets. "My father was just a regular street guy caught up in the street world," Tyson said. Kirkpatrick abandoned the Tyson family around the time Mike was born, leaving Tyson's mother to care for the children on her own. Kirkpatrick died in 1992.
When Tyson was ten years old, the family's financial difficulties forced them to relocate to Brownsville from Bedford-Stuyvesant. Tyson spent his early years living in and among high-crime districts. His first battle, according to an article in Details, was a larger young man who had taken Tyson's pigeon's head off. Tyson was often caught committing small-time offenses and fighting people who made fun of his lisp and high-pitched voice...
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