Tracy Chapman was born on March 30, 1964. She was raised in the inner-city of Cleveland, Ohio by her mother, after her parents divorced. When she was 8, her mother bought her a guitar, which led her to start playing music and songwriting. Not only was she talented, but she was smart, and won a scholarship to attend Wooster School, a private boarding school in Connecticut through President Kennedy’s A Better Chance Fund.
At Wooster School, she had her first run in with wealthy white people, some who had never met a poor person who grew up in a single-parent household like her. It was while attending Wooster School that she wrote “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution,” which would later be on her debut album and one of her most popular songs after “Fast Car.”
The racial discrimination and poverty that Chapman experienced later inspired her to study anthropology and African studies at Tufts University.