Carson's parents were Robert Solomon Carson Jr. (1914–1992), a
World War II U.S. Army veteran, and Sonya Carson (née Copeland, 1928–2017). Both from large families in rural
Georgia, Carson's parents met and married while living in rural Tennessee, when his mother was 13 and his father 28. After Robert's completion of military service, they moved from
Chattanooga, Tennessee, to
Detroit, Michigan, where they lived in a large house in the
Indian Village neighborhood. Carson's father, a
Baptist minister, worked in a
Cadillac automobile plant. His older brother, Curtis, was born in 1949, when his mother was 20. In 1950, Carson's parents purchased a new 733-square-foot single-family detached home on Deacon Street in the
Boynton neighborhood of southwest Detroit, where Carson was born on September 18, 1951. Carson's
Detroit Public Schools education began in 1956 with kindergarten at the Fisher School and continued through first, second, and the first half of third grade, during which time he was an average student. When Carson was five years old, his mother learned that his father had a prior family and had not divorced his first wife. In 1959, when he was eight, his parents separated and he moved with his mother and brother to live for two years with his mother's
Seventh-day Adventist older sister and brother-in-law in multi-family dwellings in the
Dorchester and
Roxbury neighborhoods of
Boston. In Boston, Carson's mother attempted suicide, had several psychiatric hospitalizations for depression, and for the first time began working outside the home, as a
domestic worker, When they returned to Detroit public schools, Carson and his brother's academic performance initially lagged far behind their new classmates, having, according to Carson, "essentially lost a year of school" by attending the small Seventh-day Adventist parochial school in Boston, but they both improved when their mother limited their time watching television and required them to read and write book reports on two library books per week. Carson attended the predominantly white Higgins Elementary School for fifth and sixth grades and the predominantly white Wilson Junior High School for seventh and the first half of eighth grade. In 1965, at the age of 13, he moved with his mother and brother back to their house on Deacon Street. He attended the predominantly black Hunter Junior High School for the second half of eighth grade.
High school By grade 9, the family's financial situation had improved. His mother surprised neighbors by paying cash to buy a new
Chrysler car, and the only government assistance they still relied on was
food stamps. Carson attended the predominantly black Southwestern High School for grades nine through twelve, graduating third in his class academically. In high school, he played the
euphonium in band and participated in forensics (public speaking), chess club, and the U.S. Army
Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) program where he reached its highest rank—cadet colonel. and worked as a biology laboratory assistant at
Wayne State University the summer between grades 11 and 12. In his book
Gifted Hands, Carson relates that as a youth, he had a violent temper. "As a teenager, I would go after people with rocks, and bricks, and baseball bats, and hammers", Carson told NBC's
Meet the Press in October 2015. He said he once tried to hit his mother on the head with a hammer over a clothing dispute, while in the ninth grade he tried to stab a friend who had changed the radio station. Fortunately, the blade broke in his friend's belt buckle. Carson said the intended victim, whose identity he wants to protect, was a classmate, a friend, or a close relative. After this incident, Carson said he began reading the
Book of Proverbs and applying verses on anger. As a result, he states he "never had another problem with temper". In his various books and at campaign events, he repeated these stories and said he once attacked a schoolmate with a
combination lock. Nine friends, classmates, and neighbors who grew up with him told CNN in 2015 they did not remember the anger or violence he has described. In response, Carson posted on Facebook a 1997
Parade magazine issue, in which his mother verified the stabbing incident. He then questioned the extent of the effort CNN had exerted in the investigation. Carson has said that he protected white students in a biology lab after a
race riot broke out at his high school in response to the
assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
The Wall Street Journal confirmed the riot but could not find anyone who remembered Carson sheltering white students.
College He wanted to attend college farther away than his brother who was at the
University of Michigan. Carson says he narrowed his college choices to
Harvard or
Yale but could only afford the $10 application fee to apply for only one of them. He said he decided to apply to Yale after seeing a team from Yale defeat a team from Harvard on the
G.E. College Bowl television show. Carson was accepted by Yale and offered a full scholarship covering tuition, room and board. In 1973, Carson graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Yale "with a fairly respectable grade point average although far from the top of the class". Carson does not say in his books whether he received a
college student deferment during the
Vietnam War. He does say that his older brother, then a student at the University of Michigan, received a low number (26) in the
first draft lottery in 1969 and was able to enlist in the Navy for four years instead of being drafted, whereas he received a high number (333) in the second draft lottery in 1970. Carson said he would have readily accepted his responsibility to fight had he been drafted, In his book,
America the Beautiful (2012), Carson said, "The Vietnam War was, in retrospect, not a noble conflict. It brought shame to our nation because of both the outcome and the cause." In the summers after he graduated from high school until his second year in medical school, Carson worked at a variety of jobs: as a clerk in the payroll office of
Ford Motor Company, supervisor of a six-person crew picking up trash along the highway under a federal jobs program for inner-city students, a clerk in the mailroom of
Young & Rubicam Advertising, assembling fender parts and inspecting back window louvers on the assembly line at
Chrysler, a crane operator at Sennett Steel, and finally a radiology technician taking X-rays. At Yale, Carson had a part-time job on campus as a student police aide. In his autobiography, Carson said he had been offered a scholarship to
West Point. Cadets receive a free education and room and board in exchange for a commitment to serve in the military for at least five years after graduation. In his autobiography,
Gifted Hands, Carson recounted that exams for a Yale psychology course he took his junior year, "Perceptions 301", were inexplicably burned, forcing students to retake the exam. Carson said other students walked out in protest when they discovered the retest was significantly harder than the original examination, but that he alone finished the test. On doing so, Carson said he was congratulated by the course instructor, who told him the retest was a hoax intended to find "the most honest student in the class". Carson said the professor awarded him $10 and that a photographer for the
Yale Daily News was present to take his picture, which appeared in the student newspaper with a story about the experiment. Doubts were raised about this story in 2015 during Carson's presidential campaign.
The Wall Street Journal attempted to verify Carson's account, reporting that Yale undergraduate courses were identified with only two digits in the early 1970s, that Yale had offered no course called "Perceptions 301" at the time, and that Carson's photo had never appeared in the
Yale Daily News.
Medical school Carson entered the
University of Michigan Medical School in 1973, and at first he struggled academically, doing so poorly on his first set of comprehensive exams that his faculty adviser recommended he drop out of medical school or take a reduced academic load and take longer to finish. He continued with a regular academic load, and his grades improved to average in his first year of medical school. By his second year of medical school, Carson began to excel academically by seldom attending lectures and instead studying textbooks and lecture notes from 6a.m. to 11p.m. Carson graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School with an
M.D. degree in 1977, and he was elected to the
Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. He then spent one year (1983–1984) as a
Senior Registrar in neurosurgery at the
Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in
Nedlands, a suburb of
Perth, Western Australia. == Medical career ==