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Katherine Jackson (born Katherine Esther Screws on May 4, 1930 in Barbour County, Alabama) is the matriarch of the Jacksons musical dynasty and the mother of pop music icons Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson.

Born in Alabama, Katherine was the daughter of one Prince Albert Screws. She later changed the spelling to Scruse. A Chicago resident since the age of 4, Katherine contracted polio as a child though she eventually made a full recovery from a disease. Because of the disease's affects, she walks with a noticeable limp. In 1947, she met a teenage boxer named Joseph Jackson and within two years the couple married and settled in Indiana living in the working-class neighborhood of Gary, where Katherine reared ten children (one, a twin of one child, died a stillborn). While she worked at one time as a sales clerk in Sears, she quit her job soon after she converted to being a Jehovah's Witness in 1965 converting all her nine children in the process.

During the Jackson 5's early years, Katherine played a role in the group's development by designing the boys suits for them to perform in. After the group's rise to fame as international superstars after signing with Motown, Katherine's role was more limited. However, rumors were spreading about Joseph's infidelity, which Katherine later wrote in her book, My Family, that she had already had suspicions about- suspicions that were confirmed when Joseph fathered a baby with a Jackson 5 groupie in 1974 and again in 1979 when Joseph was rumored to have had relations with a Motown groupie. In both incidents, Katherine filed for divorce but the proceedings were later recanted because Joseph refused to leave the Jacksons' gated mansion. Currently, however, their marriage seems relatively stable.

In 1990, Katherine released her autobiography, My Family, in where she defended her most famous son, Michael, in terms of plastic surgery and other issues. Ever since then, she has remained reserved although she was seen on all the proceedings of Michael's child molestation trial in support of her son and in both the 1993 accusations and the 2005 trial flatly stated to reporters that Michael wouldn't harm children. Of all the family members, it's Katherine that Michael (and the rest of his siblings) is mostly close to.

Katherine lives in her Hayvenhurst mansion while Joseph lives in Las Vegas.