People magazine detailed that Jerome J. Berry, an alcoholic who abused Berry’s mother Judith Ann Hawkins and sister Heidi, leaves his family when Halle was four years old. Further youthful tumult was created because she grew up biracial, subjecting Halle and her sister Heidi racist encounters at regular intervals. All the while, Berry relied on her mother for strength and perspective. “She never wanted me to focus on my physical self,” Berry later says to People magazine. “My mom always said, ‘Beauty is what you do.'”
Despite these obstacles and hurtful treatment from classmates, Berry goes on to edit the school newspaper, becomes class president, and captain of her cheerleading squad at Bedford High School, a middle class suburb east of Cleveland.
“[Doing] all those things helped to make me feel a sense of empowerment,” she tells Ebony of her experience attending an all-White school.
