Michael Jackson’s family tree

The Jacksons and the Scruses (grandparents)

In a famous interview with Oprah Winfrey in 1993, Jackson cited his African ancestry, proclaiming, “I’m proud to be a Black American.” His family’s roots also included Choctaw.

His paternal grandfather, Samuel Jackson, was a high-school teacher in Arkansas whose wife, Chrystal King, had been one of Samuel’s students. They had five children, the eldest of whom, Joseph, was Michael Jackson’s father. Samuel was known for being strict with his family. After he and Chrystal divorced, he moved to Oakland, California, taking Joseph with him. Chrystal and the remaining children went to East Chicago, Indiana, where Joseph later joined them.

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Jackson’s maternal grandparents—Prince Albert Scruse (also spelled Screws) and Martha Upshaw—were tenant farmers from Alabama. They had two daughters, Kattie and Hattie. The eldest, Kattie, later changed her name to Katherine Esther; she would become Michael Jackson’s mother. In 1934 the Scruse family moved to East Chicago, where Prince found work in a steel mill and with the Pullman Company as a train porter. Within a year he and Martha divorced.

Joseph and Katherine Jackson (parents)

Joseph Walter Jackson and Katherine Esther Scruse met as teenagers at a party. At the time Joseph was married, but his union with his first wife was quickly annulled so that he could be with Katherine. They wed in 1949, when Joseph was 20 and Katherine was 19. The couple shared a love of music. Katherine was a talented singer and pianist, and Joseph played guitar in a blues band called the Falcons.

Joseph had been a promising boxer, but, after starting a family, he began working as a crane operator in a steel mill. Katherine took a part-time job in a department store. By this time the couple had moved to Gary, to a house so small that, as Michael later put it in his autobiography, “You could take five steps from the front door and you’d be out the back.” In that modest two-bedroom home, they raised nine children.

Like his father, Joseph was strict. According to several of the Jackson children, he used physical abuse to discipline them. When Michael was five years old, he was recruited into the family band that became the Jackson 5. The group, consisting of five Jackson brothers, was Joseph’s idea, and it became the family’s ticket out of working-class Gary. Joseph made his sons rehearse for hours, critiquing their routines and hitting them with a belt or switch if they messed up. By contrast, Katherine was a loving and supportive mother, a bedrock of strength, and a devout Jehovah’s Witness. When Michael died in 2009, he left nothing to his father in his will but named his mother the legal guardian of his own children. Despite Joseph’s infidelities (one of which resulted in a secret child with another woman), he and Katherine remained married until his death at age 89 in 2018, although by this time they were reportedly estranged from each other.

From the Jackson 5 to Janet (siblings)

Michael had nine siblings, one of whom died in infancy. In order of birth, the Jackson children are:

• Rebbie (Maureen; 1950– )
• Jackie (Sigmund; 1951– )
• Tito (Toriano; 1953–2024)
• Jermaine (1954– )
• La Toya (1956– )
• Marlon (1957– )
• Brandon (1957–57)
• Michael (1958–2009)
• Randy (Steven Randall; 1961– )
• Janet (1966– )

All of the Jackson kids were born in Gary, and all of them became performers. Some of them harbored other ambitions. Jackie, for one, was an exceptional athlete and dreamed of playing professional baseball. Instead, he was drafted into the Jackson 5 with Tito and Jermaine, followed by Marlon and Michael, who quickly took over lead vocal duties from Jermaine. In 1969 the group signed with Motown and had a series of hits, including “I Want You Back,” “ABC,” and “Dancing Machine.” Later the brothers switched to Epic Records, rechristened themselves the Jacksons, and were joined by Randy. (Jermaine, who had married the daughter of Motown founder Berry Gordy, chose to stay with the iconic Detroit label.) But soon Michael’s burgeoning solo career, which took off in 1972 with the singles “Rockin’ Robin” and “Ben,” would surpass his brothers’ fame.

After Michael’s blockbuster albums Off the Wall (1979) and Thriller (1982), his brothers continued to perform and record with him—at least, for a while. Most of them released solo albums, and Jermaine especially had critical and popular success in the early 1980s with such releases as the album Let’s Get Serious and the single “Let Me Tickle Your Fancy” (a surprising collaboration with the new wave band Devo). In 1983 the Jackson brothers appeared on the TV special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever. After their nostalgic group medley, Michael reflected on the old days at Motown, telling the audience, “Those were magic moments with all my brothers, including Jermaine.” Most fans remember this as the moment he launched into “Billie Jean” and introduced his dazzling moonwalk move. But astute fans wondered what Michael really meant by the comment “including Jermaine.”

Of Michael’s sisters, Janet became the most successful in the music industry, carving out a career to rival her brother’s. As a child she acted in several TV series, including Good Times and Diff’rent Strokes. After two unimpressive solo albums, she had a breakthrough with the multiplatinum-selling Control (1986), a collaboration with Minneapolis-based music producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. From then on she cranked out hits and racked up Grammy Awards. In 1995 she and Michael teamed up on the single “Scream.”

Rebbie and La Toya also recorded music, and La Toya had a cameo in the video for “Say Say Say,” Michael’s 1983 duet with Paul McCartney. The following year Rebbie had a minor hit on the pop charts with her song “Centipede.”

La Toya became better known for her very public rift with her family after she published a memoir, La Toya: Growing Up in the Jackson Family (1991), in which she claimed that their father had sexually abused her and Rebbie. Two years later Michael was accused of sexually molesting a 13-year-old boy he had befriended, and La Toya jumped into the fray with more bombshell allegations, including claims that Michael had paid hush money to several boys. Her husband and manager, Jack Gordon, said that Michael threatened to kill La Toya to keep her quiet. Years later she recanted, saying that Gordon had beaten her and forced her to speak against her brother. In 2005 Michael was tried (and ultimately acquitted) for allegedly sexually abusing another boy. At a pretrial hearing the year before, La Toya and Janet made a show of support by accompanying him to the courthouse, dressed in white and flanking him as they entered the building.

In 1997 the Jackson 5 were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Michael was inducted as a solo artist four years later, followed by Janet in 2019. In 2026 Jermaine’s son, Jaafar Jackson, portrayed his famous uncle in the biopic Michael.

Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe (wives)

During his teens and early 20s, Michael Jackson was romantically linked to actress Tatum O’Neal and model and actress Brooke Shields, who has said that their relationship was platonic. After Thriller, Jackson’s personal life was heavily scrutinized by the tabloids. Somehow he still managed to pull off a secret wedding to Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of rocker Elvis Presley, in 1994. The couple first met when she was about seven and Michael was a teen star with the Jackson 5. They reconnected in the early 1990s, when Lisa Marie was married to musician Danny Keough and considering launching a music career of her own. Reportedly, Jackson told her, “You and me, we could get into a lot of trouble. Think about that, girl.” In 1994, soon after her divorce from Keough, Jackson proposed and they wed in the Dominican Republic. Their marriage ended two years later.

Shortly after, Jackson married again, to Debbie Rowe, a nurse’s assistant to his dermatologist. They had two children before divorcing in 2000.

Prince, Paris, and Bigi Jackson (children)

Jackson and Rowe’s first child, Michael Joseph (called Prince), was born in 1997. Their daughter, Paris-Michael Katherine (called Paris), was born one year later. After he and Rowe divorced, Jackson was granted full custody. In 2002 he had a third child, Prince Michael—nicknamed Blanket and later Bigi—via a surrogate mother. The three siblings grew up at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch in California and, like their father, were closely watched by the media, such that they typically wore veils or masks to cover their faces when out in public. After their father’s death in 2009, they lived with their grandmother Katherine Jackson.

As an adult Prince studied business administration at Loyola Marymount University and cofounded a charity, Heal Los Angeles. He has also worked as a film producer, including on the 2026 biopic Michael. Paris, who spoke at her father’s televised memorial service, faced mental health problems after his death. She later became a model, actress, and singer, releasing her first solo album, Wilted, in 2020. Bigi also went into show business, working as a film director, writer, and producer.

Friends: From Liz and Liza to Bubbles

Jackson’s circle of friends included many famous figures, from fellow pop star Madonna to producer Quincy Jones, with whom he collaborated on Off the Wall and Thriller. He was mentored by singer Diana Ross at a young age and had a lasting friendship with her. In 1978 they costarred in the musical film The Wiz and both performed on the 1985 charity single “We Are the World,” which Jackson cowrote and Jones produced. Jackson thought so highly of Ross that he named her as his children’s backup guardian in his will.

Many of his celebrity friends were, like Jackson, former child stars and showbiz kids, such as actress Elizabeth Taylor, actress and singer Liza Minnelli, and actor Macaulay Culkin. In 2002 Michael and his brother Tito served as best men at Minnelli’s wedding to producer David Gest, a Jackson family friend. Taylor and Culkin were chosen as the godparents to two of Jackson’s children, Prince and Paris.

Jackson befriended Culkin in 1990, when the actor was nine years old. He was one of many children, especially boys, with whom the adult Jackson kept company. Jackson’s friendships with children garnered much criticism, especially after he admitted in interviews to hosting slumber parties for his young friends and sleeping in the same bed with them. During his lifetime the singer faced two cases involving child molestation. The first case was settled out of court, and a later case resulted in his acquittal. After his death there were more accusations by men who had befriended him as children, which were documented in the film Leaving Neverland (2019). Several people are pursuing abuse-related lawsuits against his estate.

Jackson’s other famous companions included the animals in his menagerie at Neverland Ranch. A lifelong lover of unusual pets (his song “Ben” was a love song to a rat), he kept exotic animals such as tigers, llamas, giraffes, and snakes (notably, a boa constrictor named Muscles). The best-known of his pets was Bubbles, a chimpanzee he acquired in the early 1980s. Bubbles accompanied the singer to a friend’s wedding and on a trip to Japan and slept in a crib in his bedroom. As the chimp grew bigger, he went to live with Jackson’s animal trainer and was later moved to an animal sanctuary in Florida.