My mother in 1947. I just saw this pic for the first time today. She’s 20 years old.
She grew up knowing Malcolm X, Miles David and she knew the original Harlem Globetrotters. She was a first class dresser no wonder why I love clothes.
I knew nothing about my mother. She never told me anything except what my dad told me about her later on in life.
I’m proud to be the son of Lorna May Smith. Her roots are from Charlottesville, Virginia but she lived in Bedford Stuyvesant, 203 Franklin Ave between Dekalb and Willoughby. She was a part of the Swing Era.
To all the Mom’s out there, have a great and wonderful Mother’s Day!!!
Mike Tyson said his mother’s death was “one of the best things that ever happened to me.”
Lorna died when Tyson was 16 and would have “babied” him, he said.
“There’s no way I would ever got into a street fight,” he said on a podcast last month.
Mike Tyson’s mother, Lorna, died when famed boxer was 16 years old, and he recently said her passing was “one of the best things that ever happened” to him.
She would have “babied” him, according to Tyson. But instead, he got into street fights and learned to stand up for himself, he told the Shay Shay Club podcast, last month.
“There’s no way I would ever got into a street fight,” said Tyson. “No way I would ever learn to stand up for myself.”
Tyson developed as a boxer at such a fast rate in the 1980s that he became the youngest heavyweight champion in boxing history when he beat Trevor Berbick, at age 20, to win the title. It is a record that has survived ever since.
Regarding the relationship he had with his mother, Tyson said: “I never saw my mother happy with me and proud of me for doing something.
“She only knew me as being a wild kid running the streets, coming home with new clothes that she knew I didn’t pay for.
“I never got a chance to talk to her or know about her,” he said. “Professionally, it has no effect, but it’s crushing emotionally and personally.”