Early Life and Education
Braxton was born in Severn, Maryland. Toni's father, Michael Conrad Braxton, was a Methodist clergyman and power company worker, and her mother, Evelyn, a native of South Carolina, was a former opera singer and cosmetologist, as well as a pastor. The Braxton children were raised in a strict religious household. Braxton's first performing experience was singing in her church choir.
Toni and brother Michael Braxton Jr. are the eldest of the siblings, followed by younger sisters Traci, Towanda, Trina, and Tamar.
She attended Bowie State University to obtain a teaching degree but decided to sing professionally after she was discovered by William E. Pettaway Jr., who heard her singing to herself while pumping gas.
Read more about this topic: Toni Braxton
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“Today’s pressures on middle-class children to grow up fast begin in early childhood. Chief among them is the pressure for early intellectual attainment, deriving from a changed perception of precocity. Several decades ago precocity was looked upon with great suspicion. The child prodigy, it was thought, turned out to be a neurotic adult; thus the phrase “early ripe, early rot!””
—David Elkind (20th century)
“I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface of things. We think that that is which appears to be.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We have not been fair with the Negro and his education. He has not had adequate or ample education to permit him to qualify for many jobs that are open to him.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)