Berry Gordy/Biography

==Early years==
Berry Gordy, Jr. was born in Detroit, Michigan. He was the seventh of eight children (Fuller, Esther, Anna, Loucye, George, Gwen, Berry and Robert), born to the middle-class family of Berry Gordy II (a.k.a. Berry Gordy, Sr.) and Bertha Fuller Gordy (1899-1975), who had relocated to Detroit from Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1922. Gordy was brought up in a tight-knit family with strong morals. Berry Gordy II (1888-1978) was the son of Berry Gordy I and a woman named Lucy Hellum. Berry Gordy I was the son of James Thomas Gordy, a white plantation owner in Georgia, and his female slave Esther Johnson. Berry Gordy, Jr. is distantly related to former president Jimmy Carter through Carter's mother, Bessie Lillian Gordy.