 Carson's Detroit Public Schools education began in 1956 with kindergarten at the Fisher School, and continued through first, second, and the first half of third grade, during which time he was an average student.When Carson was five, his mother learned that his father had a prior family and had not divorced his first wife.In 1959, when Carson was eight, his parents separated and he moved with mother and brother to live for two years with his mother's Seventh-day Adventist older sister and her sister's husband in multi-family dwellings in the Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston.