I just finished reading Sidney’s autobiography…The Measure of a Man. Five stars across the board.
Sidney’s writing voice transmits elegance, smarts, toughness, dignity, and character from the opening page thru the last page of the book.
The book was released in 2000 and was a selection for Oprah’s Book Club back in the day.
Why is it white people loved Sidney so much? I’d love to go to a Trump rally in the deep South and ask them if they treasure Sidney Poiter’s work? Ask them what they know about Sidney’s life.
Was he just an uppity nigger who didn’t know his place in America? I mean, what was it about Sidney which in a sense transformed the manner in which motion pictures started becoming made during the 60’s in the midst of the Civil Rights movement?
Sidney was born premature at all of three pounds. The doctors told his parents, Reginald and Evelyn, their son wouldn’t live. But he did.
As Sidney repeats endlessly in his book…it is from Reggie and Evelyn of which he got his character and work ethic.
His parents were dirt poor sharecroppers on a tiny island in the Bahamas called Cat Island. Their lone crop was tomatoes. There was no indoor electricity or plumbing. The toilet was outside.
At the age of fifteen Sidney was sent to live with some relatives in Nassau. Sidney had no formal education and struggled with his diction and reading skills.
Sidney spent several years in Nassau before moving northward to Miami in search of more opportunity.
It was in Miami in which Sidney figured out he was black. It was the first time in his life he realized he had a different skin color. It was the first time he came to know what the words Jim Crow meant to a black person. It meant as Sidney wrote…’For the first time in my life I realized I was perceived as three-fifths of a human being by white people.’
Sidney didn’t last long in Miami and became restless in a hurry. With all of forty dollars in his pocket he went to the bus station in search of a new future where he wouldn’t be thought of as three-fifths of a human being.
He asked the ticket attendant at the bus station where he should go for his next place to live with only forty bucks in his pocket. The attendant said, ” Probably…New York. That’s eleven bucks for a round trip ticket.”
Sidney replied, ” Give me a one-way ticket.”
And that’s how Sidney Portier from French descendants in Haiti went from tiny Cat Island to New York to become one of the greatest actors the world has ever known.
Sidney made a living washing dishes. Then he and a friend opened a small barbeque shack in Harlem. Then one day Sidney saw a sign which was advertising auditions at the American Negro Theatre.
Sidney went and read for a part in an upcoming play and was told to leave the building and never come back by the manager of the theatre. He was told his inability to read and his thick Bahamian diction made him unfit to perform.
Sidney didn’t quit. He got a friend to tutor him with his reading and began working on his diction and the manner in which he spoke.
One year later…Sidney went back to the same theatre and auditioned for the lead role. Sidney was beaten out by another young black actor who Sidney admitted had a much better singing voice than he did. But Sidney was given the alternate’s role…which was a beginning.
Then fate came into play when on the night of the play opening, the male lead actor a chap by the name of Harry Belfonte became ill and couldn’t perform.
Sidney stepped in and became something of a hit.
A white agent by the name of Marty Baum came to notice Sidney in the play and came to offer Sidney a small part in a film which would pay $750 dollars a week… was a small fortune considering Sidney was making less than $30 dollars a week from the barbeque restaurant.
Sidney read the role and was given the part…but then there was a problem. Sidney told the agent he couldn’t take the part because he didn’t respect the character he was being asked to play in the movie. He said Reggie and Evelyn would never approve of their son playing the part of such a weak individual. Swear to God. Can you imagine that in today’s world?
Marty Baum the agent shakes his head in disbelief and wishes Sidney the best with his acting future.
Sidney goes back to washing dishes and the barbeque restaurant.
A year passes and out of the blue…the agent Marty Baum reappears in Sidney’s life with a part he thought Reggie and Evelyn might approve of playing in an American film.
Sidney loved the roll and then became Marty Baum’s best client ever.
When we think about Martin Luther King Day what I specifically think it should mean is this….’The American Dream should be there for all three-hundred and thirty Americans to aspire for if they have the guts, the will, and the destiny to make it happen.’
Every child in this country along with their parents should be able to dream and dream big. That’s the American Dream and it should not be exclusive to those conceived in an Ivy League sperm bank or who have parents who paved the way thru a trust fund.
But in closing…so much of what transpired with Sidney Poitier happened because Reggie and Evelyn Poitier dreamed along with their son and told him to dream big while never forgetting his roots.
Have a meaningful Martin Luther King Day and dream big.