Benjamin Lafayette Sisko, played by Avery Brooks, is the main character of the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Born in 2332 in New Orleans, Louisiana, Benjamin is the son of Joseph Sisko, the chef and owner of the restaurant "Sisko's Creole Kitchen," "Sisko's" for short. His birth mother was a human woman named Sarah. However, Sarah was actually possessed by one of the Bajoran Prophets (the life-forms that exist inside the Bajoran wormhole), who manipulated her into marrying Joseph and conceiving Benjamin. Sarah and Joseph were happily married until Sarah disappeared two days after Ben's first birthday, when the life-form left her body. She died in an accident several years later. Joseph eventually met and married another woman who went on to raise Benjamin as her own son. Benjamin remained unaware of these events until well into his adulthood and long after he had otherwise made contact with the Bajoran Prophets. Ben has a sister named Judith, and at least two brothers.

Sisko entered Starfleet Academy in 2350. During his sophomore year, he was in a field-study assignment on Starbase 137. He met a woman named Jennifer in Babylon, New York on Gilgo Beach, shortly after graduating from the Academy. The two eventually wed and had a son named Jake.

Avery Franklin Brooks (born October 2, 1948) is an American actor, television director, jazz musician, opera singer, college professor and narrator. Brooks is perhaps best known for his television roles as Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, as Hawk on Spenser: For Hire and its spinoff A Man Called Hawk, and in the Academy Award-nominated film American History X.

Brooks was born in Evansville, Indiana, the son of Eva Lydia (née Crawford), a chorale conductor and music instructor, and Samuel Brooks, a union official and tool and die worker. His maternal grandfather, Samuel Travis Crawford, was also a singer. At age eight, his family later moved to Gary, Indiana when Samuel Brooks was laid off from International Harvester. Of Gary, Brooks has said "I was born in Evansville... but it was Gary, Indiana that made me." The Brooks household was filled with music. His mother, who was among the first African-American women to earn a master's degree in music at Northwestern University, taught music wherever the family lived. His father was in the choir Wings Over Jordan on CBS radio from 1937 to 1947, and his maternal uncle Samuel Travis Crawford was a member of the Delta Rhythm Boys. "Music is all around me and in me, as I am in it", Brooks has said.