Editing Tina Turner (section)

==Early life==
Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock<ref group="lower-alpha">Ike Turner stated her birth name was '''Martha Nell Bullock'''. Turner signed her legal name as '''Martha Nell Turner''' on contracts in 1977 and 1978.</ref><ref name="HA"/><ref name="Heritage Auctions-1978"/> on November 26, 1939, in [[Brownsville, Tennessee]].{{sfn|Turner|Loder|1986|p=4}}<ref name="Fong-Torres-1971">{{Cite magazine |last=Fong-Torres |first=Ben |date=October 14, 1971 |title=Tales of Ike and Tina Turner |url= https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/tales-of-ike-and-tina-turner-237489/ |url-status=live |magazine=Rolling Stone |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20190713061836/https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/tales-of-ike-and-tina-turner-237489/ |archive-date=July 13, 2019 |access-date=September 14, 2019}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Hobbs |first=Larry |date=April 21, 1971 |title=Beautiful, Bold: Non-Knoxvillian Tina Makes It Big Here |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-knoxville-news-sentinel-ike-and-tina/130143847/ |access-date=January 8, 2024 |work=The Knoxville News-Sentinel |pages=44}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Cannon |first=Geoffrey |date=May 30, 1971 |title=An Unalienated Interlude With Ike, Tina Turner |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times-ike-and-tina-turne/131470956/ |access-date=January 8, 2024 |work=The Los Angeles Times Calendar |pages=10}}</ref> She was the youngest daughter of Floyd Richard Bullock and his wife Zelma Priscilla (née Currie).{{sfn|Turner|Loder|1986|p=4}}<ref>{{cite magazine |url= https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/tina-turner-sole-survivor-78803/ |title=Tina Turner: Sole Survivor |first=Kurt |last=Loder |magazine=[[Rolling Stone]] |date=October 11, 1984 |access-date=December 18, 2018 |archive-date=December 19, 2018 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20181219044257/https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/tina-turner-sole-survivor-78803/ |url-status=live}}</ref> The family lived in the rural [[Unincorporated area#United States|unincorporated community]] of [[Nutbush, Tennessee]], where Bullock's father worked as an overseer of the [[sharecropping|sharecroppers]] at Poindexter Farm on [[Tennessee State Route 180|Highway 180]]; she later recalled picking cotton with her family at an early age.{{sfn|Norris|2000|pp=25–30}}{{sfn|Gulla|2008|p=170}}

Bullock was [[African Americans|African American]], but she believed she had a significant amount of [[Native American ancestry]] until she participated in the [[PBS]] series ''[[African American Lives 2]]'' with [[Henry Louis Gates Jr.]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.cbsnews.com/video/tina-turner-reflects-on-being-a-black-woman-in-rock/|title=Tina Turner reflects on being a Black woman in rock - |publisher=CBS News|date=May 25, 2023}}</ref>{{Sfn|Turner|Loder|1986|p=5–6}} Gates shared her [[genealogical DNA test]] estimates and traced her family timeline.<ref>{{cite web |title=African American Lives 2. Profiles. Tina Turner {{!}} PBS |url= https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/aalives/profiles/turner.html |website=[[WNET|Thirteen]] |access-date=May 25, 2023 |archive-date=December 9, 2022 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20221209172234/https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/aalives/profiles/turner.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

Bullock had two older sisters, Evelyn Juanita Currie and [[Alline Bullock|Ruby Alline Bullock]], a songwriter.{{Sfn|Turner|Loder|1986|p=6}} She was the first cousin once removed of bluesman [[Eugene Bridges]].<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Bock |first=Scott M. |date=April 2018 |title=Eugene 'Hideaway' Bridges |url= https://digital.livingblues.com/publication/?m=21747&i=485104&p=32 |magazine=Living Blues |location=University, Mississippi |publisher=Center for the Study of Southern Culture |volume=49 |number=2 |page=31 |access-date=December 6, 2020 |quote=But we ended up staying with my grandfather Jack Bullock. Anna Mae Bullock was Tina Turner. That was my mamma's cousin, so she is my second cousin. |archive-date=April 3, 2021 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20210403095621/https://digital.livingblues.com/publication/?m=21747&i=485104&p=32 |url-status=live}}</ref> As young children, the three sisters were separated when their parents relocated to [[Knoxville, Tennessee]], to work at a defense facility during [[World War II]].{{sfn|Gulla|2008|p=170}} Bullock went to stay with her strict, religious paternal grandparents, Alex and Roxanna Bullock, who were [[deacon]] and [[deaconess]] at the [[Woodlawn Baptist Church and Cemetery|Woodlawn Missionary Baptist Church]].{{sfn|Gulla|2008|p=170}}{{sfn|Norris|2000|p=107}} After the war, the sisters reunited with their parents and moved with them to Knoxville.{{sfn|Gulla|2008|p=170}} Two years later, the family returned to Nutbush to live in the Flagg Grove community, where Bullock attended [[Flagg Grove School|Flagg Grove Elementary School]] from first through eighth grade.{{sfn|Gates|2005|p=114}}{{sfn|Norris|2000|p=27}}

As a young girl, Bullock sang in the church choir at Nutbush's Spring Hill Baptist Church.{{sfn|Norris|2000|p=28}}{{sfn|Gulla|2008|p=174}} In 1950, when she was 11, her mother Zelma left without warning, seeking freedom from her abusive relationship with Floyd by relocating to [[St. Louis]].{{sfn|Gulla|2008|p=171}} Two years after her mother left the family, her father married another woman and moved to Detroit. Bullock and her sisters were sent to live with their maternal grandmother, Georgeanna Currie, in Brownsville, Tennessee.{{sfn|Gulla|2008|p=171}} She stated in her autobiography ''[[I, Tina]]'' that she felt her parents did not love her and that she was not wanted.{{Sfn|Turner|Loder|1986|p=10–11}} Zelma had planned to leave Floyd but stayed once she became pregnant.{{sfn|Bego|2005|p=16}} Bullock recalled: "She was a very young woman who didn't want another kid."{{sfn|Bego|2005|p=16}}

As a teenager, Bullock worked as a [[domestic worker]] for the Henderson family in [[Ripley, Tennessee]].{{Sfn|Turner|Loder|1986|p=29}} She was at the Henderson house when she was notified that her half-sister Evelyn had died in a car crash alongside her cousins Margaret Currie and Vela Evans, while Vela survived the car crash.{{sfn|Bego|2005|pp=26–28}}{{sfn|Turner|Loder|1986|pp=32}} A self-professed tomboy, Bullock joined both the [[cheerleading]] squad and the female basketball team at [[George Washington Carver High School (Brownsville, Tennessee)|Carver High School]] in Brownsville, and "socialized every chance she got".{{sfn|Norris|2000|pp=25–30}}{{sfn|Gulla|2008|p=171}} When Bullock was 16, her grandmother died, so she went to live with her mother in St. Louis. She graduated from [[Sumner High School (St. Louis)|Sumner High School]] in 1958.<ref>{{cite news |url= https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE2DC1331F933A25756C0A964958260 |title=Black History in St. Louis |date=May 10, 1992 |access-date=December 11, 2007 |work=The New York Times |quote=...&nbsp;Sumner High School, the first school west of the Mississippi for blacks established in 1875 (among graduates are Grace Bumbry, Arthur Ashe, and Tina Turner)&nbsp;.... |archive-date=June 2, 2008 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080602050559/http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE2DC1331F933A25756C0A964958260 |url-status=live}}</ref> After high school, Bullock worked as a [[Unlicensed assistive personnel|nurse's aide]] at [[Barnes-Jewish Hospital]].<ref>{{cite news |url= https://www.ajc.com/lifestyles/health/celebrities-you-never-knew-were-once-nurses/KKG8g0o3Td6C9O7tpDyznL/ |title=8 celebrities you never knew were once nurses |first=For the AJC |last=April Hunt |newspaper=The Atlanta Journal-Constitution |access-date=February 23, 2019 |archive-date=February 24, 2019 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20190224001819/https://www.ajc.com/lifestyles/health/celebrities-you-never-knew-were-once-nurses/KKG8g0o3Td6C9O7tpDyznL/ |url-status=live}}</ref>