Early Life
Robinson was born Walker Smith Jr. in either Ailey, Georgia (according to his birth certificate) or Detroit, Michigan (according to his autobiography), to Walker Smith Sr. and Leila Hurst. Robinson was the youngest of three children; his older sister Marie was born in 1917 and his older sister Evelyn was born in 1919. His father was a cotton, peanut, and corn farmer in Georgia, who moved the family to Detroit where he initially found work as a construction worker. According to Robinson, Smith Sr. later worked two jobs to support his family—cement mixer and sewer worker. "He had to get up at six in the morning and he'd get home close to midnight. Six days a week. The only day I really saw him was Sunday...I always wanted to be with him more."
His parents separated and he moved with his mother to the New York City neighborhood of Harlem at the age of twelve. Robinson originally aspired to be a doctor, but after dropping out of De Witt Clinton High school in ninth grade he switched his goal to boxing. When he was 14, he attempted to enter his first boxing tournament but was told he needed to first obtain an AAU membership card. However, he could not procure one until he was sixteen years old. He received his name when he circumvented the AAU's age restriction by borrowing a card from his friend Ray Robinson. Subsequently told that his style was "sweet as sugar" by future manager George Gainford, Smith Jr. became known as "Sugar" Ray Robinson.
Robinson idolized Henry Armstrong and Joe Louis as a youth, and actually lived on the same block as Louis in Detroit when Robinson was 11 and Louis was 17. Outside of the ring, Robinson got into trouble frequently as a youth, and was involved with a violent street gang. He married at 16. The couple, who had one son, Ronnie, divorced when Robinson was 19. He finished his amateur career with an 85–0 record with 69 knockouts—40 coming in the first round. He won the Golden Gloves featherweight championship in 1939, and the organization's lightweight championship in 1940.
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