B.B. King
Riley B. King was born on September 16, 1925, on the Berclair cotton plantation near the town of Itta Bena, Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers Albert and Nora Ella King. He considered the nearby city of Indianola, Mississippi to be his home. When King was four years old, his mother left his father for another man, so he was raised by his maternal grandmother, Elnora Farr, in Kilmichael, Mississippi.
James Albert King
James Albert King was born in 1864 and was of Irish and African descent. His birthplace has been speculated variously as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Ireland and Ireland, Ohio. King married Delia Linsey in 1895, and they both worked as sharecroppers, in Henry County and Clayton County in Georgia and then Stockbridge, Georgia where they settled and where their son, Martin Luther King Sr. was born in 1899. King struggled with alcoholism and disapproved of his son and wife attending church. When his son Martin became involved in an altercation with a white property owner the family went into hiding for a period. King died in 1933.