Complex sentence: He was born John Pickens Jenkins in Forkland, Alabama, but when less than a year old his father, a sharecropper, died and Jenkins grew up with his mother and uncle.
Split into simpler sentences: He was born John Pickens Jenkins in Forkland, Alabama. His father, a sharecropper, died when John was not yet one year old, and the boy grew up with his mother and uncle.