Mae Carol Jemison was born in Decatur, Alabama on October 17, 1956. She spent her first three and a half years in the small Alabama town. Her mother, unhappy with job opportunities in the South, joined the Great Migration and moved to Chicago, Illinois. Her parents valued education. Charlie Jemison, a maintenance supervisor, and Dorothy Jemison, a teacher, took their children to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry and the Field Museum of Natural History to visit and learn. As soon as she learned to read, Mae checked out science books from the library, reading about evolution, dinosaurs, stars and planets.
When she was eight years old her mother signed her up for beginner ballet at the Sadie Bruce Dance Academy. This started her life-long love of dance. She continued to take modern dance classes at the Jane Addams Hull House Association Community Center. The complicated dance routines challenged Jemison to understand shape, form, and rhythm. And she gained an appreciation for hard work, physical strength, and grace.
After a confrontation between her brother and members of the Blackstone Rangers street gang, her parents decided to move from the mostly African American neighborhood of Woodlawn to Morgan Park. Jemison’s family was the first Black family on their block. Morgan Park High School and a couple of the elementary schools had been historically integrated, but the residential areas were not. Excelling in science during elementary school, Jemison created projects focusing on the evolution of life on planet Earth. She learned about astronomy while visiting the Adler Planetarium in Chicago; viewing stars from the perspective of the Southern Hemisphere and being fascinated looking at what the sky looked like thousands of years ago.