Early Life
Abdul-Jabbar was born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr., on April 16, 1947, and grew up in Manhattan in New York City, the only child of Cora Lillian, a department store price checker, and Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Sr., a transit police officer and jazz musician. At birth, he weighed 12 pounds, 10 ounces (5.73 kg), and was twenty-two-and-a-half inches (57.2 cm) long. He was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended St. Jude School in the Inwood section of Manhattan. Later in life, he converted to Islam. He initially joined the Nation of Islam in 1968, before retaking the Shahada and converting to Sunni Islam that same summer.
From an early age he began his record-breaking basketball accomplishments. In high school, he led Power Memorial Academy to three straight New York City Catholic championships, a 71-game winning streak, and a 79–2 overall record.
Read more about this topic: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)