Early Life
Dinkins was born in Trenton, New Jersey, and raised by his father, his parents having separated when he was six years old. He moved to Harlem as a child but returned to Trenton and attended Trenton Central High School, where he graduated in 1945 in the top 10 percent of his class. After graduation, he attempted to enlist in the United States Marine Corps, but was told that a racial quota had been filled. He served in the Marine Corps from 1945 through 1946.
Dinkins graduated magna cum laude from Howard University with a degree in mathematics. He later graduated from Brooklyn Law School.
Read more about this topic: David Dinkins
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“He had long before indulged most unfavourable sentiments of our fellow-subjects in America. For, as early as 1769,... he had said of them, “Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging.””
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cynical and disillusioned is precisely because, when the abstract idealism has worn thin, they are uncertain about the value of the actual lives of the patients they are treating. This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which is incapable of knowing what a human life is worth.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)