James Earl Jones

  b. 1931 | American actor

At The Bottom

— 1936

The move traumatized Jones, as he'd left the only life he'd ever known and entered a strange world.

Five-year-old James Earl was humiliated, unable to get the sound of his Sunday school classmates’ laughter out of his head.  He had recently moved from rural Michigan with his maternal grandparents, “Mama” and “Papa,” who had basically raised him since shortly after his birth in Akabutla, Mississippi.  His father and mother had split up before Jones was born, and his mother was frequently away from the family, searching for work wherever she could find it in the midst of the Great Depression.  When it no longer became possible to get by on the farm in Mississippi, Jones’ grandparents brought the whole family northward — including aunts, uncles and cousins — to a Michigan farm they’d never seen.  The move traumatized Jones, as he’d left the only life he’d ever known and entered a strange world.  Suddenly, the young boy with a beautiful singing voice developed a stutter.  When the kids at church laughed at his deep Southern accent, the stutter worsened.  Before long, Jones refused to attend Sunday services; not long after that, he refused even to speak.  For the next eight years, he was virtually mute.