Poitier was born in Florida – three months early – where his Bahamian parents sold homemade tomatoes at the market. His father did not expect his son to survive and bought him a small coffin; her mother went to the fortune teller to find out Sidney’s future. She learned that the youngest of Poitier’s seven children would “walk with the kings.” Sidney survived the premature birth and at the same time gained American citizenship by being born on American soil.
However, he did not move to the United States until he was fifteen, and for the first time found out what it means to be black in the United States. According to Poitier, racism was “everywhere like barbed wire that I kept bumping into and cutting.” After moving from Miami to New York, he worked his way through a dishwasher, a messenger, digging excavations, and sleeping on paid toilets on cold nights. At the age of 16 they joined the armywhen he lied about his age, but he did not last long in the military hospital.
After the war, he decided to become an actor, but the first audition at the black American Negro Theater turned out to be disastrous because Poitier spoke English with an impenetrable Bahamian accent. Due to the lack of actors
