Born in 1954, Tina Knowles-Lawson's roots are in Louisiana, where her miner father and seamstress mother hailed until they moved to Dallas, Texas. Moving to Dallas came with a significant career change for her father, Lumis Albert Beyincé, who became a longshoreman after partially losing his hearing. The couple had her in their mid-forties, making her the youngest child in a family of seven.
"I got the sneaking suspicion since they were forty-four that I might not have been planned," Lawson joked at a past luncheon. "All five of my siblings—four of my siblings and myself— attended Holy Rosary Catholic prison...um, I mean school."
According to Lawson, schooling in the '50s and '60s wasn't a walk in the park. Despite her parents diligently serving the church —her mother making clothes for the altar boys, while her father drove the nuns around—she and her siblings faced discrimination. "I felt like, well the nuns for one thing, they picked on us a lot," said Lawson. "And I didn't quite understand why at the time."
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