Jefferson D. Dunbar, Jr. wrote about Sidney Poitier's The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography for The Idler in 2000. Oprah Winfrey selected the memoir for her book club in 2007. Sidney Poitier, in "The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography", guides the reader into his humble beginnings, as if through a dream or meditation...
"I'm on the porch of our little house on Cat Island in the Bahamas. It's the end of the day and evening is coming on, turning the sky and the sea to the west of us a bright burnt orange, and the sky to the east of us a cool blue that deepens to purple and then to black. In the gathering darkness, in the coolness of our porch, my mother and father sit and fan the smoke from green palm leaves they're burning to shoo away the mosquitoes and the sand flies." Cat Island was a "tiny spit of land", forty six miles long, three miles wide located in the Bahamas. It is where Mr. Poitier constructed his life's foundation, philosophy, his sense of self. And he credits this idyllic setting for much of the success he has had in his life.
The first chapter of this diligent, brisk autobiography is titled, "The Idyll". Without the influence of radio or television, Mr. Poitier, as a child, was free to explore the island, experience the good and bad of it; take risks, and learn to have no fear. His mother and father were the kind of parents who nurtured their youngest of three with a kind of silent love and kindness. A trait Mr. Poitier would come to understand more in adulthood than he did as a child in their midst. It may be difficult for some to comprehend that such an articulate man of film, television and theater spent the first fifteen years of his life being raised by a mother that he terms "...a creature of silence." The only person Evelyn Poitier was able to express herself to was her husband, Reginald. Yet Sidney Poitier never failed to feel how deeply his mother cared for him. To this day, he senses her presence, her guiding hand. For all the silent love, the continuing guidance, the question that lingers on in Mr. Poitier's mind is, "Who was this person?"
Although Evelyn Poitier was a woman, a mother given to reticence, she was quite active in her son's upbringing. She was "a very special human being..." who possessed an indomitable will and a strong instinctive nature. Mr. Poitier reflects on the time of his birth and his mother's worry over whether he would survive or not. He was born prematurely in Miami where his parents had traveled to sell a hundred boxes of tomatoes at a produce exchange. At birth, Mr. Poitier had weighed less than three pounds and was not expected to live. His father, Reginald, had gone so far as to acquire a shoebox from an undertaker in the "colored" section of Miami that was to become Sidney's casket.
Undaunted, Evelyn visited a local soothsayer of sorts. She returned home with this from the soothsayer: "Don't worry about your son. He will survive and will not be a sickly child. He will grow up to be...he will travel to most of the corners of the earth. He will walk with kings. He will be rich and famous. Your name will be carried all over the world. You must not worry about that child." This particular soothsayer was not only quite prescient, but right on the money. Perhaps this incident would be a sufficient example of who Evelyn Poitier was for anyone else. But Sidney Poitier had, and still has, a persistent curiosity about people and places.
And so, when he departed the Bahamas for Miami, Florida at fifteen, he may have left his mother behind, but not his desire to know exactly who she was. The more he discovered about her, the more he would comprehend about his own psyche. Beginning anew in Miami, Mr. Poitier resided with an older brother. It was in Miami that he sampled his first taste of racism. Working as a delivery boy, he had refused to walk from the front door of a wealthy white customer to a rear door to deliver a package. Instead, Mr. Poitier left the parcel at the front door and walked away. Upon his return to his brother's home a couple of days later, he found the family in a darkened house, cringing in fear of the Ku Klux Klan. They had been there in search of the young Sidney to retaliate on behalf of the white customer.
While the rest of the family was filled with fear, Mr. Poitier was not. "In Nassau, while learning about myself, I had become conscious of being pigeonholed by others, and I had determined then to always aim myself toward a slot of my own choosing."
The youthful Mr. Poitier was not about to allow anyone to define who he was. Could that have been a part of Evelyn Poitier showing herself in her son? Furthermore, by the time that Mr. Poitier had come to the United States, the "foundation... had had time to set, the Jim Crow way of life had trouble overwhelming me." His "values and my sense of self were already fully constructed."
Soon Mr. Poitier's distaste for the blatant racism he witnessed in Miami took him to New York, Harlem and The Apollo Theatre, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald. Later there was a brief stint in the Army, as a way to escape the chill of winter in New York.
On a whim, and badly in need of a job, Mr. Poitier auditioned as actor with the American Negro Theatre. He failed miserably. After learning how to read and shaking his Bahamian accent, Mr. Poitier succeeded the second time around, toiling as a janitor at the Theatre to earn his right to study. More of the irrepressible spirit of Evelyn Poitier in her son.
After replacing "a kid named Harry Belafonte" as his understudy, Sidney Poitier was discovered by a casting director who cast him in a version of Lysistrata for Broadway. With the exception of a few short periods of unemployment, it was onward and upward for Mr. Sidney Poitier the actor. He was about to embark upon the kind a career in Hollywood that no other African American actor had ever experienced before him---as a leading man. "Now Way Out", 1950, with Richard Widmark, was Sidney Poitier's first Hollywood film role; and it was not only the first film that his parents would see their son in, it was the first motion picture they had ever seen in their lives.
Since it was the 1950s and Hollywood was still in the grip of blacklisting, a period when directors, actors, and writers were questioned about their loyalties to the United States and possible associations with suspected communists or communist sympathizers. Mr. Poitier was unlucky enough to be questioned by a studio attorney about his association with the African American actors Paul Robeson and Canada Lee who had come under suspicion.
Asked rather timidly to sign a loyalty oath, Mr. Poitier demurred and instead asked to give it some thought. Throughout the production of "Blackboard Jungle", (1955), he was not questioned again and believed he had been fortunate enough to escape having to name names.
He had already set his mind against doing such a thing. Nonetheless, at the risk of sacrificing all that he had worked so hard for. Again during David Susskind's television production of "Edge of the City", Mr. Poitier had believed the issue of his associations would arise. But it did not happen. And his career was never jeopardized in the same way again.
He has no answers as to why his pursuers had given up.
Still, while he managed to avoid blacklisting, the inescapable issue of race would continue to haunt him. During a publicity tour for "Blackboard Jungle" in Atlanta, Mr. Poitier, film star, was told at a "very nice" restaurant -- where all the waiters were black, including the maître d'-- that if he wanted to be seated for a meal, a screen would have to be placed around him to hide him from the white diners.
When Mr. Poitier asked why, he was told: "Well, it's the practice here; it's the law." Mr. Poitier saw how it had hurt the black maître d' to say what he had to say and Mr. Poitier hurt for him. He walked out of the restaurant outraged and angry, but he never "accommodated" the insult, perhaps, continuing unfettered by the lingering stench of racism, toward the fulfillment of his destiny. His quest for what defined him as a person.
Thus far, in Mr. Poitier's career as an actor, he had lent the characters he portrayed an air of dignity, intelligence, stature, pride and fierce determination combined with just the right amount of resilience in the face of great odds working against him. Traits that were passed on to him by Evelyn Poitier.
And then in 1964, Mr. Poitier won the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in "Lilies of the Field". He was the first and remains the only African American performer to win Best Actor in the history of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (Note: Denzel Washington won a Best Actor Oscar for his role in the 2001 film, "Training Day".)
What was it about Sidney Poitier that his peers in the film industry liked and respected so much? It is one of the riddles that Mr. Poitier attempts to solve in his searching autobiography.
Yet, he was not surprised at Hollywood's response to him in 1964, "because I'd never seen myself as less than I am." More than anything else he realized he had a responsibility as an actor and not as a black man to be disciplined in his chosen field.
The films that Mr. Poitier made, the way in which he portrayed his characters, were all deliberate choices made so that the public would know him as the person he wished to be perceived as: A determined, hard working individual of high standards making a living for his family.
These were the same qualities instilled in him by Reginald and Evelyn Poitier on Cat Island and Nassau, Bahamas.
Besides "Lilies of the Field". "The Defiant Ones", "A Patch of Blue", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and To Sir With Love are among the films that stand out most prominently in Mr. Poitier's mind.
Each of them contain the true essence of Sidney Poitier. Qualities that aided him in his personal life; a hard won battle with prostate cancer; the loss of a best friend to the same ailment; the estrangement from his children from his first marriage.
Today Sidney Poitier survives against all odds. And though he believes many questions remain as to how and what formed him into the person he has become. In the end life, his life, as with all mortal beings, shall forever be a mystery.
