Sidney

I was not expected to live.

I was born two months premature.

When it was determined that I would not survive…

My father came back to the house…

With a shoebox.

They were prepared to tuck me away.

I believe that my life has had

more than a few wonderful, indescribable turns.

The world I knew was quite simple.

I didn't know there was such a thing as electricity.

I didn't know that there was such a thing as

having water come into the house through a pipe.

I learned by observation what the world was like.

I saw creatures. I saw birds.

And I had to figure out for myself what they were.

I was the youngest of all the children.

And, uh, I caught the most hell, of course, from them.

But I was... I was, uh, the youngest

and, um, who was very often left at home,

uh, when my folks went to the fields.

My folks were tomato farmers.

There was very little schooling. Very little.

Everything I knew in terms of values, in terms of right and wrong,

in terms of who I was, value-wise, had to come from my parents.

I was always watching them.

Their treatment of each other. How they cared for each other.

How they behaved with their friends.

How they behaved with other people in the village.

And I would behave as close to that as I could

because I would see the results of their behavior.

The Florida government put an embargo

on tomatoes coming from the Bahamas.

My father's business fell apart.

So he sent my mother, and she took me, to Nassau

to find a place that we could afford.

As we're heading into the harbor, I saw something moving.

And it looked like a beetle coming down the street.

And I asked my mother, "What is that?"

And she said, "That's a car."

I said, "What is a car?"

And she described it to me. I was fascinated.

As we walked the streets, I saw glass windows

with all kinds of wonderful things behind the glass.

But then I saw a woman.

But she is standing opposite another woman who looks exactly like her.

And whatever the woman is doing, the other one is doing.

Obviously, there was a mirror.

But I hadn't... I didn't know there were such things as mirrors.

Do you hear me? I didn't know what a mirror was.

I never thought about what I looked like.

I would only see what I saw.

There was one white person on Cat Island.

When I got to Nassau, I saw other white people,

but they were in the minority.

Black people were 90% of the population.

I ran with a group of guys who were pretty much my age.

Within a matter of months,

three or four of those guys wound up in a reform school.

And my dad decided

that I was probably heading for some kind of trouble.

I was sent to Miami, Florida.

I left the Bahamas at 15 with this sense of myself.

I had ten and a half years of it on Cat Island.

Then I had four and a half years of it in Nassau.

So I arrived in Miami, Florida, with a sense of myself.

And from the time I got off the boat, Florida began to say to me,

"You're not who you think you are."

When you grew up in a community on Cat Island,

where everybody's Black,

everything you know and see around you is powerful

and good and nurturing,

and it's Black.

But there's no concept of, really, race.

Because that was his worldview and his personal view,

he moved through the entire world space that way.

He just always thought that he was who he was.

And, you know, there were times when that got him into trouble.

I was sent to live with my-my brother, the only relative we had there.

He got me a job at a place called the Burdines department store

in Miami, Florida, to make deliveries.

And, uh, I was told the lady's name and...

So I got on the bike, and I went to Miami Beach.

And I got to the address, and I walked up to the front door,

and I rang the bell.

Then the lady of the house came out, and she said,

"What are you doing at the front door?"

And I said… … "I'm here to deliver this package."

She said, "Get around to the back door."

And she slammed the door in my face.

Well, I'm new to this whole experience of race in the US.

I just couldn't understand it.

Why would I have to go to the back door, and she's standing right here?

But she slammed the door in my face, and I don't know what to do.

And my decision was, I put it right there on the doorstep.

After the evening was done, I went home to my brother's house.

I got there. It's dark.

I'm approaching the house. There's no lights.

And I wondered why there was no lights, but I walked up to the front door.

His wife opened the door and grabbed me

and pulled me in, to the floor,

and slammed the door.

And I... She said, "What did you do? What did you do today?"

And I said, "I-I didn't do anything. What... What did I do?"

She said, "The Klan was here. What did you do today?"

I decided I had to get out of town. I wanted to get out of town.

I had put a few pieces of clothing

into the dry cleaner.

I went to this place. It's in a totally white community.

On the way back, I go to what would be the bus stop,

and the buses have stopped running.

A car stopped and pulled right up to me,

and it's loaded down with cops.

And they asked me, "What are you doing?"

I said I was just trying to hitch a ride back to town.

"What are you doing here?" And I explained everything.

He pulls out his pistol,

and he leans it outside the window of the car.

And he put it right up against my head.

There.

And he said to his compatriots,

"What should we do with this person?"

They didn't use the word "person."

He said, "If we let you go",

you think you could walk all the way back to where you came from,

"uh, without looking back? You think you can do that?"

And I said, "Yeah, I can do that."

He said, "If you look back once, we're gonna shoot you."

For the next 50 or more blocks,

every time I passed a window, I would shift my eyes only,

and I would pick up that police car at the back of me.

And they stayed there…

All the way back to the little street

where my relatives were living.

And at that point, they just simply drove on.

Within a matter of a few months,

I had to kind of switch my whole view of life.

I began to learn who had the power.

And I would witness the, uh, application of that power.

I knew by then I had to get out of town.

I knew I had to get out.

I didn't know that I would ever find

a place different from Florida.

I heard from some guys that there was a place

where we had a different set of opportunities.

New York.

I got to New York at the Greyhound bus station

at 50th Street and 8th Avenue.

And I walked out on the street,

and I'm just amazed at this place.

And an African American guy walked up to me.

He says, "How are you doing?" And I said, "Fine."

He says, "Where are you going?"

I said, "Could you tell me how I can get to Harlem?"

He said, "Oh, yes."

He says, "You go down there, and you take the A train."

I'm very skeptical now because he said, "Go down there.

There's some steps going down into the ground."

So I said, "Okay."

I... I very gingerly kind of went down the steps.

Then I heard this rumbling, rumbling up.

And in no time, this train came...

Uh, it got to 116th Street, and I got off.

And I followed people who were getting off,

and I walked up the steps.

And there I was in Harlem.

Whoa!

Everywhere I looked there were some Black people.

I would say, "Hello." They would say hello to me.

I was just thrilled.

Black artists were just very present in Harlem.

And you were just aware of the greatness that was around.

You know, Ellington.

Lena Horne. Billie Holiday.

You know, I mean, superstars were walking the land.

You knew what the measure of an artist was then.

It was right there in front of you, like, no filter.

So, this is the way in which this era

was waiting for Sidney Poitier.

You were here in search of fame and fortune.

- I was here in... in... in search. - In search.

I must say that my search was fruitless for quite a long time.

At 49th Street and Broadway,

there was a... a bar and grill.

In the window, it said, "Dishwasher wanted."

I walked in. He said, "When can you start?"

I said, "I can start right now."

And he hired me.

Not only did they put me to work, they were paying four bucks a night.

And I could eat.

When I finished the first night's work,

I went to the bus station.

I went to sleep in the toilet.

There used to be pay toilets in them, and it cost a nickel.

So I put a nickel in. And I got in.

I put down the seat. I sat there, put my feet up against the door,

and I would sleep.

Uncomfortably, needless to say.

On one particular evening,

I'm sitting right next to the kitchen,

and I'm reading a paper.