Where did Sidney Poitier grow up and live?

📍Arthur's Town, Cat Island, The Bahamas

1927 – 1943

“I was born on Cat Island in the Bahamas in 1927, the youngest of seven children of tomato farmers. Cat Island was remote and poor — no electricity, no running water, a community that lived close to the land and the sea. I grew up with no images of what a Black person was supposed to be in a world run by white people. When I was fifteen my family moved to Miami and I encountered American racism for the first time with a directness that shocked me. I went to New York, washed dishes, taught myself to read properly with a Jewish waiter's patient assistance, and eventually auditioned for the American Negro Theatre. The Cat Island childhood — its simplicity, its dignity — was the foundation of everything I brought to the screen.”

👍 LovedThe simplicity and dignity of Cat Island life — the absence of the images and hierarchies that shaped Black consciousness in America. The sea and the land and the community of a small island.

👎 DislikedThe shock of American racism encountered at fifteen in Miami. The poverty of the early New York years. The illiteracy that the Cat Island schooling had not fully remedied.

Map showing where Sidney Poitier lived — Arthur's Town, Cat Island, The Bahamas

🗺️ Approximate location today

📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons

Sources: Poitier, S. This Life (1980), Knopf; Poitier, S. The Measure of a Man (2000), HarperCollins