Editing Tracy Morgan (section)

==Early life==
Morgan was born on November 10, 1968, in [[Brooklyn]]<ref name="Jimmy Kimmel Live! Season 20 Episode 172">{{cite web |url=https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxrNGtmE69P6_fsFZ_VJjaozWzhSiqsOaA |title=Tracy Morgan Born in Brooklyn |work=Youtube |publisher=Jimmy Kimmel Live |date=2022-09-27 |access-date=2022-09-28 |quote=Yeah, I was born in Brooklyn }}</ref> and raised in Brooklyn's [[List of New York City Housing Authority properties#Brooklyn|Marlboro Houses and Tompkins Houses]] in its [[Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn|Bedford–Stuyvesant]] neighborhood.<ref name=bowling/> He is the second of five children<ref name=bowling/> of a homemaker, Alicia (née Warden),<ref name=autogenerated2/> and James Morgan Jr IV, a musician who left the family when Morgan was six years old.<ref name=bowling>{{cite web|last=Lipton|first=Michael A.|url=https://people.com/archive/bowling-em-over-vol-61-no-1/ |title=Bowling 'em Over|work=[[People (magazine)|People]]|volume=61|issue=1|date=January 12, 2004|access-date=February 24, 2022|archive-date=November 22, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141122131639/http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0%2C%2C20149057%2C00.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine|last=Fretts|first=Bruce|url=https://ew.com/article/2003/11/27/tracy-morgan-nbcs-next-breakout-star/|title=Is Tracy Morgan NBC's next breakout star?|magazine=[[Entertainment Weekly]]|date=November 27, 2003|access-date=April 12, 2010}}</ref> He is the third cousin of rapper [[Nas]].

His father named him Tracy in honor of a platoon mate and friend who shipped off to [[Vietnam]] with him and was killed in action days later.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://adamcarolla.com/tracy-morgan-and-jo-koy|title=Tracy Morgan and Jo Koy|date=April 7, 2014|work=[[The Adam Carolla Podcast]]|access-date=October 1, 2014}}</ref>

The target of bullies as a child,<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/06/13/tracy-morgan-i-know-bullying-can-hurt/|magazine=Entertainment Weekly|title=Tracy Morgan: 'I know bullying can hurt'|author=Lynette Rice|date=June 13, 2011|access-date=December 10, 2011}}</ref> Morgan attended [[DeWitt Clinton High School]].<ref name=bowling /> In 1985, during his senior year, he learned that his father had contracted HIV from hypodermic needle use.<ref>The Star Ledger. section 1. pg 20. June 8, 2014</ref> His father died in January 1987, aged 38.<ref name=bowling/>

Morgan married his girlfriend Sabina that year <!--1987--> and dropped out of high school just four credits short of his diploma to care for his ailing father.<ref name=bowling/> Living on welfare, Morgan sold [[crack cocaine]] with limited success,<ref name="Fresh Air">{{cite episode|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114009203|airdate=October 22, 2009|series=Fresh Air|title=Tracy Morgan on Being 'The New Black'}}</ref> but began earning money performing comedy on the streets<ref name=bowling/> after his best friend was murdered. He said in 2009: "He would say to me, 'Yo, Tracy, man, you should be doing comedy.' A week later, he was murdered. And that for me, that was like my Vietnam. I had my survival guilt when I started to achieve success. Why I made it out and some guys didn't."<ref name="Fresh Air"/>

Morgan embarked on a stand-up comedy career, successfully enough that he "finally moved to a nice community in [The Bronx neighborhood of] [[Riverdale, The Bronx|Riverdale]], from a run-down apartment next to [[Yankee Stadium]] in the Bronx."<ref name="Fresh Air"/>