Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway

Hardaway was born in Memphis in 1971. When he was very young, his mother, Fae Hardaway, moved to California and left him in the care of his grandmother, Louise Hardaway. Louise had started life as a sharecropper in Arkansas, but she, her husband, and her children moved to Memphis as soon as they had saved up enough money to buy a house there. Throughout her life, Louise, a cook in Memphis elementary schools, worked hard to do the best she could for her family, including Hardaway. Although the neighborhood in which they lived in Memphis, in the same house into which Louise and her husband had moved in 1950, was becoming more impoverished and dangerous, Louise did her best to prevent Hardaway from becoming involved in crime. The two went to the Early Grove Baptist Church together for many years, and when Louise couldn't go anymore, Hardaway went by himself.

When Hardaway was fourteen, his mother returned to Memphis and he moved back in with her. Although he became an All-American player, he was not concentrating on his schoolwork, and as a result when it came time for him to go to college he could not pass the American College Test (ACT) and had to sit out his freshman year under the rules of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Bylaw 5-1-(j), more commonly known as Proposition 48.

Despite offers from schools across the country, Hardaway had chosen to remain close to home and attend

Penny Hardaway

Memphis State (now the University of Memphis). "Imagine walking around your hometown and everybody thinks you're a dummy," Hardaway told Sport magazine's Darryl Howerton. Even when he went back to his old high school to watch their games, students from the schools they played would sometimes derisively chant "A-C-T! A-C-T!" at him from across the gym.