Speaker How old were you when you were wielding a pickaxe?
Speaker Uh, I was 12 and a half, 13, you know, because I worked as a water boy for the start. Then I started with the big Axia, so close to 13.
Speaker What was the result of that of that physical labor on on a child?
Speaker That physical labor on a child had no effect, except it was excellent exercise. I mean, I didn’t have the power to do much with the pickaxe except what my strength would allow, but I became quite good at it. I would I would swing with the rest of the guys and we all they sang, you know, and they did things they threw in unison and stuff. So it was it made it OK, except that I would tire quicker than most and I would call for the waterboy more often than others so I could take a breather.
Speaker But it was OK. And I kind of felt like a big guy, you know.
Speaker Where was church in your life at this point? At that point?
Speaker And that’s our church in my life where my mother started, what the Anglican Church, the which is the. The English version of the Catholic Church, I would imagine, and and she moved to the Roman, but I think that move was principally due to to the fact that we as a family moved from one part of the island to another from Rascon. We moved to the Wall Street and on the Wall Street was a Catholic church directly across the street from from us actually on a slight diagonal. And she she started going to the Roman Catholic Church then because we always walked the equivalent of a couple of miles to the church, the first church, the Anglican Church, and we had no other form of transportation. So when we did move to the street, it was it was more convenient for her to be able to go to church just across the street. And in that she always took me to church with her. Not every Sunday. Sometimes I found ways to to manage not going.
Speaker And she did the same on the Wall Street of the Catholic Church. She wanted me to be in the choir and the priests and the nuns there should they rather liked her a great deal. And they wanted to accommodate her and they asked her to bring me in and have been.
Speaker Sing for them. See, I love it.
Speaker My mother had no idea and I didn’t that I was tone deaf. I have no I can’t carry a tune in a paper bag.
Speaker I’ve been told by many friends, but I sang for them and I was really.
Speaker Terrible, but they wanted to accommodate my mom, so. They asked me if I could learn the songs, but not and sing with the choir, but not let any sound come out of my mouth that I would kind of pantomime what I like with the rest of the boys. They would do the singing, but I would just speak because I would throw them off key, obviously. So. So that’s how I did it for a bit. But I used to get carried away and I would eventually just say something and people in the congregation would wonder what it was that, you know.
Speaker So I was eighty six out of the out of the choir but you you sang and lilies of the field.
Speaker I did. You didn’t. I didn’t know.
Speaker Oh they got somebody who sounded like you.
Speaker Yes. That was a wonderful singer and a musical conductor. As a matter of fact, a guy named Lester Jita. Uh. Something of that nature. Wonderful, wonderful man who sang for me in that so. For me. Yeah, well, he sounded exactly like, uh, no, not really.
Speaker I mean, I’m glad that people thought I sounded like him because he did very well, but I could encourage him.
Speaker Not not at all. Not at all.
Speaker Come on, Sydney saying, no, I can’t get a man.
Speaker I cannot cannot carry a tune. I used to listen and watch my friend Harry Belafonte sing. And I always marveled at such a gift.
Speaker He was miraculous. He could carry a tune.
Speaker He could pick up a note instantly. He could hear what is right and when. It’s not really had that gift.
Speaker That’s you know, some people can’t say one of those that can do and those they can do other things.
Speaker And I did other things. Yes.
Speaker Let’s talk about other things. Let’s talk about the girls.
Speaker Girls. Yes.
Speaker My daughters know the street we’re in, we’re in Nassau, I right down the street. Well, they were girls down the street. Yes. What do you want to know about Garceau Street?
Speaker Well, I want to know who you were strutting by when you came from the movies strutting down the street past the little girl, you want to take me in that territory?
Speaker Well, this strolling down the street, there was a girl on Rocks Corner who lived with her mother and her sister. Her name was Margaret. And Margaret was the most remarkable thing I had ever laid eyes on. And I from a distance, I became infatuated with this girl. But I was too shy to say anything to her and I have started going to movies and I became very, very imbued with cowboys and I used to walk by her house like a cowboy, you know, and in my own imagery, I was wearing my two guns, you know, and that’s how I wanted her to see me as this kind of heroic cowboy guy. Well, of course, to her and her sister and her mom, they were absolutely fascinated by this absolutely insane kid who comes walking around past their house like a barrel. And I never looked over there. I would kind of like glance out of the corner of my eye just to make sure that they’re aware that I’m walking by. But I could do that, you see, rather than say, hello, how are you? My name is Sydney. I just came to town and I live at the corner. I couldn’t do that. I wasn’t that social and I wasn’t that outgoing. I wasn’t that comfortable with what social things.
Speaker So the best I could do was to get our attention in a manner that didn’t appear that I was trying to get our attention. Hey, that’s what I did when I was 10 and a half years old.
Speaker And. And where was Lurlene?
Speaker Lurlene was on Katala. Lurlene was an experience on Cat Island. Yeah, sure. You really are going there. And you.
Speaker And I’m Willem.
Speaker Yeah, but I mean, you know, all of these all these crushes.
Speaker Yeah, I had crushes. I was, I was. I had crushes. Yeah. Did you ever speak to William? Yeah, I spoke to me. I did. I spoke to William. What I made was subsequent to Margaret and as Margaret was subsequent to Lurlene, by the time I had a crush on William William, I was probably 13 or so. I was an old man by then. And that was a wonderful experience that anything happened physically. But she was a very delicate personality, very and very ethereal and, uh, gentle. There was a spirituality to her. She was a very she was a little girl like I was a little boy, but there was that quality, you know, and she just had it and and I kind of like got lost in that.
Speaker So you weren’t necessarily attracted to the kind of sexy little girls or you were also attractive, but there was something special about these little girls?
Speaker Well, first, my own sexuality was just trying to get itself into a position to be, you know, matured yet. But there was something in the personalities. Yes, I think so. I don’t know what it was that that attracted me in each instance. I don’t know what I mean.
Speaker This case there was this spirituality, a sense of of, uh.
Speaker Otherworldliness, so there was a kind of romance about it, too.
Speaker True, yes, but what what? What?
Speaker Just just tell me what what I said to you. It was because it would only be from you. Not from me.
Speaker It was a kind of romance to it. Kind of romance to it.
Speaker Tell me about going to your first movie.
Speaker My first movie.
Speaker I was taken by my friends the wrong kind of guys when I learned they were taking me somewhere, I didn’t make any inquiry as to where, because that not by now, they’re in a pattern of taking me with them wherever they were going.
Speaker And I was just along and we went to this building and I saw.
Speaker Pictures of man with wide brimmed hats and things around their necks, you know, scars and stuff, and they were on horses and there were cows, there’s pictures of these things and there was a little window that they went up to and they put in their money like a threepenny piece and and they were got a little ticket. So they bought mine. For me, it’s my treat. And we went inside and I don’t want to let on to them. I don’t know where I am or what’s going on. So I went, you know, and I walked into this place and there are lots of seats.
Speaker And I saw there were some people sitting and our guys can they kind of got into an aisle and they sat down and I sat down among them. And I’m kind of waiting, you know, but I have to give the impression that this is that I’m cool with all this, whatever it is.
Speaker And I sat there and they sat there and we talked and carried on and the lights began to go down.
Speaker And I wondered what was coming. And the lights went out and a light came up on a curtain curtain that was up and the curtain open.
Speaker And it’s this white wall. And suddenly I know I was writing, you know, and from there, I mean by now I’m really action people and images of countrysides and stuff that I had never seen anything like it. And then there are cows, tons of cows just moving in. What I am absolutely nuts now because how could they get all of that stuff in this building at looking?
Speaker But I have to be cool because I don’t want my friends to know that I’m like flipping out and then the movie begins and falling and things and people and they’re talking and they’re looking and they’re rioting and the cows and they have ropes and all that stuff.
Speaker Well, I was never so fascinated in my whole life.
Speaker Nothing in life had been that impactful on my imagination.
Speaker At the end of the movie, my friends, of course, I got up, you know, and talking about, oh, boy, did you see him hit that guy and let it ride. And I’m quiet. I’m not saying much. We get outside and my friends wander off heading back for Oscoda.
Speaker I went along to the adjoining street, around to the back of the movie house, there was a door and I stood at a distance from the door waiting for all that stuff to come out to see if I could see anybody coming out because I couldn’t figure.
Speaker How did he get all those cars in that building? How do they get. I had no idea what film was. None whatsoever. None.
Speaker I stayed there and nobody came. That was a matinee performance in an afternoon around about three o’clock.
Speaker I went and I managed a threepenny piece from somewhere. I went back to that same place that evening for the evening show. And I went up to this little box and I put my thing in. They gave me a ticket and I went and I sat down by myself.
Speaker The lights went down and this big white wall and then the same things I saw before, it’s exactly the same thing. I really was really it was it was something I gotta tell you. It was something.
Speaker It was something when when you figure out that the guys weren’t in the back of the theater, in the back of the screen.
Speaker What I didn’t immediately figure out, it was explained to me in very crude terms by my friends, you know, we talked about it and they mentioned that it was movies. It was they didn’t say movies. They call it other things, but they described it. And there was some reference to film that all of this was on on something called film. And that is all on there. I couldn’t understand it for a while.
Speaker I accepted what they said, but it took a while for me to grasp the concept. And ultimately I did, of course. But it was it was an experience.
Speaker And of course, I went back and back and back, and that’s where I developed all that cowboy swagger stuff, you know, and stuff like that, because I, I identified with it so strongly that I would rather be the cowboy than than shy Sidney, you know.
Speaker Uh, so and you wanted to go to Hollywood to see to see all the cowboys, because that’s where they lived.
Speaker I well, Hollywood came a great deal later in my terms while I was here. And I saw my sister Terry asked me one day.
Speaker When my father decided to send me away because I was verging on the edge of.
Speaker Reform school problems.
Speaker He decided that he should send me away and, uh, to Florida to live with family over there and.
Speaker And.
Speaker Then my sister Terri one day said to me, what are you going to do when you get there? What would you like to do with your life when you get to America? I said, I would like to go to Hollywood and. Work as a cowboy.
Speaker I had no idea then that Hollywood was a place where films were made. I thought it was a place where there were lots of cows and and, uh, and that the cowboys I saw were, in fact, real people who worked with cows and fought off the bad guys and all that scenario. I had no frame of reference all of my early life to that point until I started seeing these movies. And also because of the great difference in the two cultures, Cat Island.
Speaker And so I just wanted to to have told her I wanted to go to Hollywood and work with with cows.
Speaker And she laughed. I remember never she always laughed with me. She never laughed at me.
Speaker And that’s why I carry that interest. It wasn’t until I got to America and had spent some time that I began to learn that Hollywood was not a place where they ran a lot of cows over all terrain.
Speaker That was the place where the films about cowboys were made.
Speaker Describe it to me. My sister, Terry.
Speaker She was very full of life. A woman, a young girl, actually.
Speaker I think the age difference between us was. Five, seven years, I guess.
Speaker She was a free spirit. That’s what I I first learned about what a free spirit is like. From watching her, she was in tune with something very open and very healthy about life.
Speaker She laughed easily.
Speaker She said what she felt in ways that it was never hurtful to anyone whom she lived. A full life in thirty four years, she was dead by then, by died before she was 35. She was. The most affectionate person in my family to me, squeeze you and kiss.
Speaker Yeah, she did all those things to me, squeeze me and kiss me and and kind of protected me like the whip that she gave William on my behalf. She was great.
Speaker She was she was fabulous.
Speaker Talk about when she was so sick and and your father sent for that. The Bush medicine guy and. Well, cured her for 14 years.
Speaker Yeah, she was. She took sick when she was, uh.
Speaker In her 20s, the illness was very severe.
Speaker My father had her placed in the hospital and stuff like that, and the diagnosis was such that they recommended that he take her home to die.
Speaker How much weight had she lost? A lot. She was she had lost. I mean, she wasted away to nothing.
Speaker And my father had some interest in in Bush Madison because Bush medicine is all that we had on Kalniete. And when I got a call when any of the other kids were sick, my mom would go to the bush and bring back leaves or stuff from near the waterfront, little sprigs of whatever they were.
Speaker And she would boil them and feed them as tea or broth or something, and we would get better. I don’t know how much of the medicine worked. I don’t know how much of what cures were effectuated were not just simply our bodies throwing off these things naturally in a week or two or so. But that’s how we lived when we were sick. Mom or my father would go and get stuff from the bush.
Speaker And my father, when daddy was so ill, he heard of a man who was visiting NASA from one of the other islands who was a bush medicine person.
Speaker And as I recall and as the story goes. He took her home from the hospital and this medicine man who came to see her and he spent some time looking at her and then he asked my dad where the the forest nearest bush area was.
Speaker And I finally told him where it was. And he went away and he didn’t come back for a couple of days when he did come back.
Speaker He came back with roots and leaves and stuff.
Speaker Organic stuff grown in the ground, you know, and from trees, and the instructions were how to prepare them. Some of it was to be boiled, some to be baked, some to be made and crushed to powder after it had been baked for so long.
Speaker And there was he was we were supposed to feed it to her under certain.
Speaker Time schedules and stuff.
Speaker Long story shot in two months, she was back on our feet and in a matter of a few moments she left and went to Syracuse, New York, because she was offered a job there as a maid in someone’s home.
Speaker And she lived for 10 years after that. She now was her life extended by the Bushman.
Speaker I think so.
Speaker My father thought so, it’s just my mom thought so how I don’t know.
Speaker I think it was extended because it was it just was I mean, she lived ten years, she gained her weight back. She was a buxom, robust woman before she got sick and she returned to a buxom, robust woman and she lived for 10 years. But the truth of the matter is, isn’t it, that all we get from modern medicine is something that originated in the bush?
Speaker What is interesting to me is how. And over time, through trial and error.
Speaker Stumbled onto these things or was there some primal instinct that guided them man to these? Bush, Madison, was it all trial and error, was it? I wonder sometimes was it how much how much primal instinct was there, you know?
Speaker Anyway, she had a wonderful life, died much too soon.
Speaker Tell me before we go off today, about the time, but I know this is jumping ahead, but but about the time that you went to see her when she was in Miami and you were going to get married to somebody and the kind of advice that she gave you.
Speaker Tell me about Teddy in Miami and why you went there to her. I was.
Speaker I was in a hotel room in Miami on my way over to Nassau from Nassau to New York, and we kind of rendezvous there and I hadn’t seen her for a bit.
Speaker And it was a great time. We had just talking about things. And I told her that I had met a girl and I was thinking of getting married and she and her very typical Teddy matter, she said, What? Yeah, are you crazy? She said, you’ve got so much time to do that. She said, you’ve got to live for us. So you have something to take into a marriage, live by yourself and go out and see the world and do this and do that. And she was painting this picture of what I needed to do to fill myself up and to fulfill my potential and stuff like that.
Speaker And she was just great on that subject. She said, you’re young and you know, you can do so many things.
Speaker How old were you? Oh, God. I was well, I was probably 20.
Speaker Yeah, about 20, 21, really a baby, but she was so insistent and she said, you can get married later.
Speaker It’s.
Speaker I didn’t get married.
Speaker I didn’t and and largely because of what she said to.
Speaker Because I had to look at I was I was getting married for some reasons that were not sound, you know.
Speaker Teddy getting married for some reasons that were not sound, but that you were always impelled towards a family, towards creating a family or having someone, we all are we not I mean, we all are.
Speaker We we have feelings about family. I think they are part of our makeup and we have feelings about being with someone. And we have. Wants and needs that can only be fulfilled with some kind of a relationship with a someone and that starts hitting you around about that age and and you I had seen my mom and dad, which was a very all time great relationship and.
Speaker And I guess I wanted to reach out for that, I did in time, I’ve been married more years than I have, not certainly by this time, you know, and it’s been terrific.
Speaker You you wrote about NASA as a new, ruthless, sophisticated system of terrorism and colonialism.
Speaker I talk about that.
Speaker How did it specifically change things for all of you and for your parents?
Speaker Well, terrorism and colonialism is an interesting mix, was certainly an interesting mix in my life.
Speaker Tourism is a way of life for some communities in the world because they happen to be lend themselves to that kind of place atmosphere to which people can go and feel comfortable and enjoy certain geographic advantages like weather and speeches and stuff like that.
Speaker And that makes certain places commercially attractive for developers and so on and so on. And then when you find it in a colonial place where the local government is administered from Europe, from Britain, as we were, then you find that colonial rule is not necessarily advantageous to the indigenous people because they are separated from the management of the country.
Speaker The management of the country is achieved by the through the application of laws designed by a by foreign culture, by a power exercised over the lives of the native population, by a foreign political influence that does not.
Speaker Make room in its, uh, in the body of its laws to accommodate the fairness that would make it a democratic procedure for all concerned.
Speaker It just simply doesn’t. Colonialism never was a democratic procedure for the people who were being colonized. And the Bahamas was no different from Asia and Africa and South America and places like that.
Speaker So the combination was politically not to our advantage. And the combination of colonialism, colonialism and terrorism had decided disadvantages, too, for our children, educationally speaking, and opportunities. You know, as a matter of fact, the seeds for colonial colonialism was very destruction were sown within itself, because ultimately, as you can see, and as has been witnessed by the world, colonialism, the withered away largely because it was so unfair to native populations.
Speaker And in its place, king, what some people call economic colonialism, economic colonialism, uh, and there is some validity to that.
Speaker But even that, uh, you can you can you can fight that.
Speaker You can deal with that, uh, a good deal easier than the one and the struggle against colonialism itself, because colonialism itself was very tough to, uh, to uproot. It was a very difficult, very difficult process in Africa, a difficult process in Asia where colonial powers were so entrenched and the laws were designed to perpetuate its existence and stuff like that.
Speaker We were lucky here that we had, uh, men we produce men who in time just simply decided it was time to challenge and, uh, and remove colonialism.
Speaker And such men were, of course, in every country that was ruled by colonialism.
Speaker How can somebody just stay there and keep people from coming in here?
Speaker JP is the why isn’t somebody over there, since we’re on it, make the distinction for me of of what colonialism was here, how many blacks were in the population and and and that these were English people who were sent over to be prime ministers, governor generals or whatever the designated ruling colonialists were called.
Speaker Well.
Speaker The breakdown racially here in the Bahamas, we were 90 percent of the population, the native Bahamian black community was about 90 percent of the population. There was an administrative group of people from from England that represented the other 10 percent. And there were some native native white whites here. They were, of course, included in the rules and regulations that favored the British. So they reaped the benefits because they were perceived as as English and treated as such, whether they were in fact or not, as long as they were white and lived here in the country, they were extended all the favorable benefits or the benefits of favor that was carried for for the colonial administrators. The colonial administrators were the colonial administrators.
Speaker They were they were the power.
Speaker The the voting was a very unusual set of circumstances where we had the vote as a population. But the manipulation of political procedures was at an expert level on the part of journalists so that they we it took us a very long time to change that very, very long term to change that. But we did have guys looking for ways to do that. And we have men it when I was a kid here, remember, I remember guys like Camilo Batla, who is a national icon today.
Speaker Daddy’s gone, but he and men like Mr. Bane among the younger guys, of course, bin Laden, bin Laden and all of the young man that’s who surrounded bin Laden and his party, a tremendous new energy was developed and nurtured by those men, men like that.
Speaker They quickly gathered together the best brains in the country and the most, not most, but many of them. Among them were lawyers themselves, trained in England who knew English laws, who knew colonial laws.
Speaker And they formed the the nucleus of what came to be the, uh, the force that revolutionized the country and led it to independence and to overthrowing the established legally overthrowing legal.
Speaker We won the government because we were able to mount the kind of opposition to colonial rule within the bounds of of the law to, uh, to win the government, which they did in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker It is an independent country. It has been an independent country since. And the things that have happened subsequent to that independence, the many, many, many of which are quite, quite remarkable.
Speaker You know, we are we are a free country and an independent body of people and doing very well.
Speaker What was your stake in and I mean, you have a passion for politics.
Speaker Was your was your route in politics more in overthrowing colonialism here and establishing a free and equitable democracy?
Speaker My, my my roots were not my roots were not in politics.
Speaker You know, politics by the time I left here at 15, 16. Politics was not my thing.
Speaker I was I was politically ignorant. I had no understanding of it.
Speaker What I had gleaned about politics was that the ruling power, colonial power was unfair, that I knew. But how politics really worked, I didn’t know.
Speaker I didn’t have the education that would have led me, that would have led me to anything understanding in terms of the specifics of local politics. So by the time I left, I had an admiration for my little battler because I had seen him in action. I had an admiration for Mr Bain and many of the other guys, older men who were fighting against it, you know, and when when the younger guys became. Strong enough and enthused sufficiently by the older guys and following in their footsteps that I began to develop my own interest and understanding of the local politics and specifics.
Speaker But then, of course, I’m away now and I’m living in America and I’m in another culture and another set of political things were surrounding my life there, though I came here often and I was able to be of assistance in the nineteen sixty seven thrust that liberated the country from colonialism. And subsequent to that time, of course, there were there were times and circumstances in which I was here and available and offered whatever I could offer under the circumstances. Still, I was in another culture where the job there was in that well it was similarly demanding. You know, the civil rights movement in America was a fearful and exhilarating and unpredictable and wrenching time for blacks and for the country generally, because what we were fighting for, there were its conditions quite similar, all based on color.
Speaker Color hair was pretty much the same thing as color in the United States. Was that the.
Speaker So I lived and tried to survive in that culture where culture was still mandated by law as a definition of how well you will be treated by the law.
Speaker The law said in America, you will be treated as less than the law specified that it said you will be treated as less than. And I never that never could.
Speaker I was always that really got me. I could never adjust to that. So I became involved in the civil rights movement.
Speaker And you never came up against any segregation on Cat Island, did you?
Speaker Yes, of course I don’t. No, there was none. There was none that I thought was most likely that there was the whites on Cat Island were oh, I mean, I don’t remember now.
Speaker And in my ten and a half years, there were two guys, I recall, who were there.
Speaker And their presence did not represent to me a a force of either oppression or segregation or stuff. It simply didn’t because mine was a semi primitive existence on an island that was.
Speaker The politics of Carolyn was of such a measure. It was all taken care of from here, NASA itself. No, there wasn’t that. It was that I understood. It was when I came here that it really popped me right in the face.
Speaker Was there segregation here?
Speaker Otherwise, you couldn’t you couldn’t go to movies. You couldn’t go to movies that were not designated for black people.
Speaker You could not live in certain areas. There were certain jobs that were not we were not allowed to have.
Speaker Mind you, the truth is, because we were 90 percent of the population, that 10 percent of the colonial power was insufficient in numbers to run a healthy tourist community like this. Therefore, they had to have people and to work to such extent as we were able with the educational system that existed here. And to the extent that those bohemians who had the wherewithal to send their children off to school, mostly to England, mainly to Jamaica, many to the United States, those kids would come back with education and skills, and those skills would allow them to move a little bit upwards in the scale of things of the scheme of things in the country so that the administrators had to have that that body of people who were able to acquire skills either here at home or from abroad in schools to fill in the the necessary kadry of of administrating people. At the same time, certain levels were off limits. There were, as they say in America, of our advancement of women. There was a glass ceiling at various levels.
Speaker That was the way it was here.
Speaker Of course, there was segregation in NASA, but there wasn’t the kind or the or the ferocity of it here.
Speaker It was in the states. Segregation here was segregation here. It differed from the United States, principally because we were in 90 percent of the population.
Speaker As a result, a black Bahamian child would vortex within the confines of that black community and within it, that child was, though it was a segregated society, that child was exposed to images of leadership importance.
Speaker For example, that child knew there were black doctors, there were black policemen. Everywhere they went, there were black government officials.
Speaker There were some of the most successful men in the country were black lawyers, administrators and educators so that the child could see that there was room and places for them to go. They could see a policeman, they could see a lawyer, they could see a doctor. They could see a school principal and say, I want to do that. And they saw them in profusion in the context of the 90 percent and where it was their black country and it was their black country, of course, or rather, they were the indigenous people country.
Speaker They were the indigenous people of the country, so. The difference in the United States, I think, at that time was the power of the country was in the numbers of the mainstream mainstream community that had fashioned the laws, that defined me and defined other blacks. That definition was an unfair definition designed to circumscribe, designed to contain, designed to relegate so that the life was a separate existence that was not at all fair or equal, neither in opportunity or any of the other criteria that would make. Fairness that would articulate what fallacies that didn’t exist and the struggle there was tougher because you had 10 percent fighting the 90 percent, just the opposite. Just the opposite and just the opposite. Just the opposite. And the struggle there, very much like the struggle here and the struggle in other parts of the world, began with guys, not just with guys who were around when I was a boy, but guys who were from other generations long gone.
Speaker So there were men and women from the days of slavery whose lives and whose names are probably forgotten forever, but who took a position here at NASA know in America and the state that took a position and and, uh, and lived a life of protest.
Speaker Their lives represented a protest against same things as they were across American history.
Speaker There are black people whose whose lives were registered, protest the way they live their lives and out of that out of that history. Over time. Over time, it was a long time came others who lived and died and registered their protest and did what they can and lived as best they could under the conditions and try to raise a family and send their kids to what schools that were. They were able to and there weren’t that many.
Speaker And in time, a generation arose that said, hey, now is the time.
Speaker And they articulated what the general concept was, which was it’s time for for change.
Speaker Now it’s it’s morally time. Ethically time. It’s just time for democracy to either be what it can possibly be or.
Speaker Or what’s interesting to me, Sydney, is that within the framework of your life, first on Cat Island and then on Nassau, where you were part of the 90 percent, you brought that at 15 to the United States so that there was already a very, very strong sense of pride and entitlement.
Speaker Yeah, pride and entitlement I carried with me. I carried with me from here there to America. I brought it with me from Cat Island here.
Speaker You know, I had a 10 and a half years there and then I had four years here, four more years here. So by the time I got to America, I had a sense of myself and a sense of myself included, my attitudes about myself gathered from the body of that 90 percent.
Speaker I saw what I could be I saw what was possible for me.
Speaker And then having seen that, having tasted of that, having felt that when I got to America, I.
Speaker Having felt that when I got to America, there was a preconception of a slot I was expected to fit. And I I looked at the preconception, I looked at the slot and I said, that’s not where I intend to find my place. And the suggestion. Was know your place. We have decided your place for you.
Speaker And I said, no, I was strong enough only because I came from this culture where I was in the 90 percent and I had enough.
Speaker I had been I’ve had enough pride of expectation.
Speaker That’s what covers it, I would think.
Speaker And then I got to a place where the laws were absolutely written out in Miami. Yeah, absolutely. Right.
Speaker Now, as to what I was, according to the law, what I could expect according to the law, how far I would go according to the law. And I started.
Speaker Resisting that right away.
Speaker Tell me about that incident with the sheriff where you were wandering around the streets and and somehow you wandered into the sheriff thing and he said, where are you going, [Unrecognized] or something?
Speaker No, I don’t want to talk about that.
Speaker It but it was well, talk about how it affected you, the brutality of that.
Speaker I can’t talk about brutality is not always just physical, you know.
Speaker No.
Speaker OK, so the brutality that interests me most was the brutality of denial. Exactly right.
Speaker And that’s what concerns me most when I was a young man in America, the brutality of denial, you know, so I mean incidents, there were no need to worry about, incidents that took place, incidents that we can pop out of the whole scope of my life in America.
Speaker That’s of no value, really. I mean, I could tell you stories of things that happened that were brutal and and really demeaning. And I could get into that. But I don’t want to there’s no point in wallowing in that stuff.
Speaker What is interesting, though, is the is the brutality of denial.
Speaker To to have a blanket definition of an individual, of a personality, of a human being that has no.
Speaker Nuances to it, that definition, it is blanket, it is block, it is. Unrefined it is. Just that way and all your life, therefore, if you are going to survive as a result of accommodating that definition, you have to begin to twist your life and your self perception and your values.
Speaker And you you bend them a little here and you twist them a little here.
Speaker Not with intent. To satisfy, but with an acquiescence to what is the you perceive it to be the only way to stay alive, you’ve got to have some kind of a peace made between you and this thing.
Speaker That’s cruelty, I mean, that’s to tell you the truth, for a lot of people, it was very difficult. I mean, I’m not saying it was difficult for me. It’s difficult for all black people.
Speaker Uh. And it left a mark, so that is what I think about mostly when I think about my journey and in America.
Speaker Because the any physical brutality doesn’t really cover it. Because that can be limited to incidents, but this was a overall resonance constantly, you know, mind you, now we are speaking of an America where today wonderful progress has been made.
Speaker And that’s that, too, is undeniable. You can’t deny that that has happened in in appreciable ways.
Speaker Not sufficient to level the playing field all together. It’s still tilted somewhat, not sufficient to put racism behind us altogether. It’s not there yet. There’s been a status change in it here and there, but it’s still with us, you know.
Speaker So I want to ask you a question. African-Americans who are born in America and who grow up with a very different sense of themselves than you as a poor boy and the Bahamas.
Speaker We’re so far ahead in terms of what you felt you could do, what the horizon held was for you, what your expectations could be a kid, a black kid growing up in America. Didn’t have that that strength, that that community, that sense of looking around and seeing a doctor here, a lawyer there.
Speaker Well, let me let me speak to that. Yes.
Speaker I got this whole sense of of the difference between my upbringing and the difference and that with the American black child. Right? Yeah.
Speaker I went to America with much of my myself already congealed.
Speaker And I come from a culture here in the Bahamas where we were 90 percent of the population, which allowed me to go to America with a sense of myself.
Speaker The American child.
Speaker Didn’t to a large extent have that kind of certainly not that atmosphere of being a part of a 90 percent, they were a part of a black community, certainly, but the black community was a 10 percent part of a 100 whole.
Speaker So the truth of the matter is. The black child who survived the American.
Speaker Had a harder struggle than the black child who survived the bohemian thing because of the nine, 10, 10 nanny situation and therefore it is even more remarkable.
Speaker That the black child in America turned out to be Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins and Paul Robeson and Walter White and the head of the Urban League, Mr. Whitney forgotten its last name, a Philip Randolph and the black historians that we have and have had.
Speaker I mean, there’s a body of young black children. Who survived all that in the context of being the 10 in the 90s?
Speaker It was a hell of a lot tougher for them being the 10 in the 90s than it was for me being the 90, being oppressed by the time you see so.
Speaker I played Thurgood Marshall the life of Thurgood Marshall, and I researched the life from the time he was a student even before.
Speaker And you saw.
Speaker You talk about a passion, you talk about a sense of self, you talk about a commitment, no, where I went in a marriage in the Bahamas, nowhere was I ever threatened physically. I mean, I didn’t walk around this country with any sense of there is a threat abroad in this land. And I have to keep my wits about me on that score.
Speaker He was a guy who roamed America, going from state to state into territory where he was not wanted by the established power, a part of which was a violent segment he was in reading about him in order to play him. I found a man and I found stories about a man who were who was hounded and who was chased by guys with not good intent.
Speaker Amazing, and he did it year in and year out and year in and year out and year in and year out.
Speaker And he was one there were many others.
Speaker Robeson, in a different way, lived a life how much strength and courage a guy like that had to have to say, here is who I am and this is how I am, to say that against a nightie is a hell of a lot tougher than, say, against a 10.
Speaker Do you know what I’m saying? Yes. And then, of course, in my business, there were guys like Canada, Lee. There were all kinds of people across the spectrum of my career from when I was first started an American Negro theater. There were names of people who persevered and and stayed the course and all that stuff.
Speaker So it was different, the cultures and whatnot, not to get the impression that it was better for me that I came out of this culture. The only thing that was good for me is I came out of this culture better armed to deal with the new culture that I was going into.
Speaker Exactly. Yeah, better armed. Better armed, because there was no threat of death for a child here.
Speaker Right.
Speaker Yeah, their children and America and the black neighborhoods who face threats and death, which is just inconceivable here.
Speaker Well, yeah, it is the threat of death. Too young to talk to American children, black children.
Speaker There was a time when it was the that was a possibility.
Speaker And, uh, but the fear that ensues, you know, living where you are asked to fit into a block, a slot that does the slot itself doesn’t speak well of, you know, it’s, uh. But you also are aware that behind the threat that is represented by the slots you have been directed to is a power that punishes if you don’t find accommodation within it.
Speaker You see, uh.
Speaker At least in my early days, I didn’t have that here, the punishment was I go to reform school. Maybe about a part of that might have been my own my own problem.
Speaker But I was it was it was it was different. It was tougher.
Speaker It was tougher for for for those guys, you know, in America, it was just tougher.
Speaker There’s a kind of a joy and a fun, not only in you, I mean, because this has been a learning experience for me and your family.
Speaker And the whole family has a you know, a very free, loose, joyous.
Speaker There’s a lot of laughing that goes on and. And I think that, too, was something that you brought from here that was like unstoppable out. Maybe it was the thing that Teddy had.
Speaker Well, you’re talking about a joy.
Speaker You mentioned a joy, joy of laughter and a kind of openness and a kind of expression of life and and stuff. Yeah, that that’s.
Speaker A part of of life here was part of life here for me, my sister was a perfect example of that and people laughed and they can express themselves and they they had an ease with each other.
Speaker If you ever went to a church here, you’ll find that the people have there’s an ease with their religion and there’s an ease with with how they deal with each other, you know, but I suspect that that might have that is not so unique to the to the Bahamas.
Speaker I think it might very well be a a thing close to societies that are the less mechanized society, the more likelihood you’ll find that kind of ambiance.
Speaker I think mechanized societies give off a rhythm unto itself that influences the behavior of the inhabitants of that society.
Speaker Might be subtle and maybe not so subtle, but there are influences that kind of emanates from this mechanized society. You take in a city like New York City that I love a lot.
Speaker You walk down the street of New York, if you if you open up a camera on New York City at any given part of the day and you put a a similar camera on Bay Street here in Nassau, the pace it differs. It differs. Now, the reason I think the difference is because in New York. The fact of numbers in terms of humans, you’ve got seven or eight million people, seven or eight million people have a variety of cultures, the survival syndrome.
Speaker On an average level requires kind of pace and what is making this requirement of this pace? I think it’s the mechanized nature that is that makes living in a community of eight million possible in order for eight million people to live in that kind of proximity. There has to be mechanization. There has to be all kinds of mechanized ways of functioning.
Speaker And that mechanized way of functioning itself leaves its imprint on the sensibilities of the population.
Speaker So that walking down Fifth Avenue, you can tell the strollers, you can tell the strollers, they’re walking down 5th Avenue and the lady is holding on to her guy’s arm and the window shopping. And they’re kind of looking around.
Speaker And for every pair of strollers, you’ve got dozens of people just going this way and that way and getting here.
Speaker You know, it’s it’s that’s the way a city is.
Speaker OK, when you were on Cat Island with me, the base is way different than it is here right now.
Speaker So you will drive down the main road and Karalis and you see a few people walking along and they will stop and chat with someone or they’re sitting about enjoying and chatting or they just kind of like moving about that way.
Speaker It is the absence of the mechanized society, plus the numbers.
Speaker Here the numbers are more the society is more mechanized and what have you found?
Speaker You found that traffic is this and that, so that you when you when you got to Miami.
Speaker Well, tell me first about moving in with my brother here.
Speaker Yeah, I moved in with my brother. My father sent me to him. That’s where I left. And it was it was wonderful. He had a wife, has a wife. She’s he’s passed away now. My brother his wife is still alive. And I stayed with them. And it was an interesting experience. I was in a learning mode and getting accustomed to the new culture. Uh, I didn’t stay in Miami long. I didn’t like Miami very much.
Speaker Uh, and before long, I was off.
Speaker I was.
Speaker But before we go off. Before we go off, tell me about the two ways that you learned how to use the telephone.
Speaker How I used to use the telephone. I used to I learned to use the telephone by trial and error. I didn’t know how to use a telephone, you know, I had no idea how to use a telephone. And in America, what I did was I just simply wanted to know how to use a telephone and I would pick up a payphone and I would put the nickel.
Speaker And in those days it was a nickel. I put the nickel in the thing and I would just dial numbers and listen.
Speaker Now, of course, sometimes I didn’t dial enough numbers and sometimes I dialed too many numbers, but I kept doing it, kept doing it, trial and error. And I stumbled on to the exact number of numbers.
Speaker And I did it and I listened.
Speaker And lo and behold, the phone rang and somebody picked it up and say hello. And I hold it up very quick.
Speaker Oh, that was the process of of how I learned to to use a telephone and.
Speaker And how did you learn how to drive a car?
Speaker I learned how to drive a car pretty much the same way. I didn’t know how to drive a car.
Speaker And before I went there, it was during the war and there were lots of jobs available and therefore a lot of jobs available to blacks, and one of which was in parking lots, which seems to me to be a wonderfully exotic way of making a living. But I didn’t know how to drive. So I went to this parking lot and I stood by the entrance where people would get out of their cars and be and receive a ticket or something. And then the car would sit there until one of the attendants came down into it and drive it off. Wow. What a better opportunity to watch and see how it’s done.
Speaker So I stood really close and a guy would come up, open the door, sit in, and I would look for the whatever the ritual was, he would turn on a key and he would do I would pay attention to that.
Speaker But I knew things were happening down with his feet and I have no idea what they were. So I got myself in a position ultimately to see what was going on. And I figured out all the things, you know, and after watching, so I went and made an application for a job and they asked me if I could drive.
Speaker I said yes. I got in the car. They said, take that car and put it in that place. I got in the car and I didn’t. I move that car about fifteen, twenty feet, OK? And then it started to buckle on me and then I got fired. I didn’t get fired. It wasn’t even higher, but I got to get out of there. But I learned how not to make the car buck. So the next place I went to, I got to a place and I was supposed to put the car in this particular slot. But then I, I didn’t have the maneuverability.
Speaker So I made some mistakes and was fired.
Speaker I kept doing it learning a little bit at a time. I kept going to parking lot after I ran through so many parking lots. You have no idea about the seventh or eighth or ninth parking lot by now. I know what to do. Mind you, I don’t have the expertise, but I know what to do with my my feet and I know how to touch the brakes so that they don’t. And I know what to do with this. I had I had the shifting down on certain cars, but I didn’t have the shifting down on the regular kind of shift.
Speaker Yeah.
Speaker So anyway, I lost. Shot.
Speaker I did that often enough that I actually learned to try, I was never, ever able to hold a job as a parking attendant because I obviously didn’t know how to do it expertly to zip in and back up and do all that stuff.
Speaker But I learned to drive that way and I had to go on elsewhere to find employment for survival.
Speaker And the other thing I wanted you to tell about was trying to leave Miami by train that you that no matter how far you went, that you always found yourself in Miami again before you took before you managed to get a job and get out of there.
Speaker Well, I was I try to get out of Miami many times by train by. Hobbling by hopping the freight, I did hop freight many times, but I didn’t know where they were heading and I often wound up up the line upstate Florida, in Tampa, Palm Beach, someplace like that. And the freight would be side tracked on a on a siding somewhere and left. And I would have to one or two instances. I had to walk in search of the nearest town because it was a sidetrack out of town. I made many attempts to get out of Florida. I had no money to do it with. So I decided to take the freight train. But it was more than that. I mean, I was by then influenced somewhat by motion pictures. You know, I’d seen so many of them in. And I saw that taking the freight train was I saw that on on on screen.
Speaker And it it seemed to me as good a way to travel as any if you didn’t have any money.
Speaker Uh, but eventually I got a job to go to the mountains in Georgia to work, and they gave me a ticket, a bus ticket. And I went to do to this place in Georgia.
Speaker And I worked in a kitchen, uh, in the mountains.
Speaker But also explain that that your frame of reference on a place was like NASA, so you always thought you’d be in another state if you got on the train?
Speaker Well, I knew America was a big place, obviously, but I didn’t know that Florida is a very long state.
Speaker I mean, from from Miami to Jacksonville is a long way, certainly from Miami to Atlanta, Georgia was a long way. I went from Miami to Atlanta by bus to for this job in the mountains. And then when I got to to Atlanta, I had to change buses and take another bus up into the mountains.
Speaker It was the distance is also a surprise to me.
Speaker And when I left the mountains and headed for New York at the end of summer, during which I had worked and saved thirty nine bucks and decided I was going to go to New York, New York was quite a ways away. I had no idea that it would take, uh, a day and a night and part of the next day to finally get there.
Speaker Why did you leave Cyril and his family and go on your own?
Speaker I mean, how old were you when you were really on your own in Miami?
Speaker Oh, I was on my way. I was 15. I was on my way to 16 or close to it.
Speaker Why? I left my brother Cyril’s house.
Speaker I had the world. The world was open to me. I didn’t like Miami.
Speaker My I didn’t adjust to this, to the segregation stuff and.
Speaker I went out into the world, I thought it best for me to go out into the world. I had to go out into the world. But to see I was curious and my curiosity drove me. I had to go out. I didn’t like Miami, so I had to go elsewhere and elsewhere, meant wherever I could go. And if it was not terrific there, I would find someplace else to go. I was looking for comfort. I was looking for safety. I was looking for ese.
Speaker I look a long time, but, uh, I didn’t know that and I just.
Speaker I just went out into the world and New York was out into the world.
Speaker Were you always sure that you would find a job that you could, you know, earn? Was there any ever fear mixed with all this curiosity?
Speaker I never feared, never feared survival because this was during the war.
Speaker And getting a job was not that difficult.
Speaker The jobs that I found most suited to me were dishwashing jobs because I would get meals where I would earn a salary, but I would have at least two meals per day while I worked. And I kind of, you know, got into got into that.
Speaker But I never feared I knew what the society was.
Speaker I knew myself, but I didn’t fear the segregation in Miami, you see, I left Miami before, long before any of that stuff began to just be heavy over my head.
Speaker I didn’t like Miami and I wanted to get away from where it was made itself.
Speaker Very evident to me. Here’s where you will be. And I said no. And I wanted out and I left. I went to work in Georgia. When I came down from the mountains at the end of the summer, I went to New York and in New York I found a kind of safety because there was this large black community there. And, uh, I was I was arrested by the phenomenal energy of the city.
Speaker I just was occupied by it, not fearful if I was fearful, I wouldn’t have left Miami.
Speaker If I was really fearful, I wouldn’t have left Sarah, I wouldn’t have left and I would have stayed there. But never was there enough concern about fear to alter my.
Speaker Wherever my curiosity was leading me was away.
Speaker Now, mind you, I could have gotten killed anywhere along the line because that’s how some places were, some places where I walked through more threatening situations than I was aware of.
Speaker Let’s put it that way.
Speaker Mm hmm.
Speaker It was really looking back on it that you saw looking back on it, I saw the dimensions of some of those situations.
Speaker But even when they were there, I mean, I knew I knew what a bad situation was for me, but I could handle bad situations.
Speaker I mean, unless they came upon me suddenly and I and I’m overwhelmed by it, by the suddenness of it. But ordinarily, I could smell out circumstances that needed to be avoided or such things as I could do to neutralize them.
Speaker You know, I had I had that ability from living in the in the Bahamas. I mean, I lived in Canada and I lived here in Nassau and I knew Nassau.
Speaker I first became aware of class, what the class system was in USA, and I learned about class here because everywhere I went there was class was saying to me, things are different here.
Speaker What you’re used to is not what you’re going to find here. That’s what class and and what you will find here is what you will have to accommodate yourself to or even at a young age. I could smell that. Therefore, when I went to the States, I was able to smell slot’s class, segregation, discrimination, unfairness. All of these were signposts that were no strangers to me, you see. So if one seemed too close for comfort, I at least instinctually knew how to just slide out of its range as best I could or move around it and on my journey. So it isn’t that I was oblivious of of all that was there. I certainly was of some of the specifics.
Speaker Like, for instance, I got caught in a civil disturbance and in New York City once and and the cops were firing guns and people were scattering and stuff.
Speaker And so something like that happens. It’s out of the ordinary and it’s unexpected. And I could have gotten killed.
Speaker But generally, I was able to sense that what was happening right away.
Speaker Why was it that you didn’t get back in touch with your family for eight years?
Speaker Why was it I didn’t get back in touch with my family for eight years, simple in the Bahamas, as was the case in most Caribbean countries?
Speaker When you leave for America, you are leaving for a place where the streets are paved with gold.
Speaker Mm hmm.
Speaker And when you arrive in a place where it is thought the streets are paved with gold, if you come and most people do come from very poor families, it is expected that you would gather up gold and send it home to help the family in their survival efforts.
Speaker Well, that was very strong in me because my family was my father’s situation was very badly bad and it was tough and I was very young and I expected that I would be able to to help them.
Speaker When I got to working in the United States, I suddenly found myself between trying to maneuver between need and want in a new society where there was plenty of everything.
Speaker The discipline necessary to function within the narrow channel between want and need was more than my age appropriateness could handle, you know. Yeah, you can you repeat, you hit your microphone.
Speaker I was more than my age appropriateness could handle. So when I earned twenty dollars or twenty six dollars from my dishwashing.
Speaker The power of what?
Speaker Overwhelmed me, here I am, I’ve got twenty six dollars, seven of which is going to go for rent, but I could buy a pair of pants if I paid down a dollar a week for such and such a time. I could do this. I could do that. Mind you, it wasn’t a lot.
Speaker But I had this 24 bucks on the other side of my wallet where my needs had I concentrated on need, I might have been able to send home a dollar from time to time.
Speaker I wasn’t old enough nor disciplined enough.
Speaker And I had it seemed to me, if you have nothing to put in the envelope.
Speaker Hmm.
Speaker So with that being the case.
Speaker Month after month fell away and over time it became. A habit, and eventually it became too late.
Speaker What do you say? What is your excuse?
Speaker So the eight years were years of growing up, of assuming manhood and its burdens too early.
Speaker Uh.
Speaker When I came back.
Speaker I was a young man. Still a young man, but I was a man.
Speaker And I came back because I was a movie actor by then and I had made a film and I had earned what to me was an incredible amount of money.
Speaker I earned seven hundred and fifty dollars a week for four weeks.
Speaker And then I had enough gold instead of sending it, I thought I’d take it. And I came home.
Speaker So what was that what was that experience like, what what movie was it and what was that?
Speaker The movie the movie was called. No Way Out. As a matter of fact, at 20th Century Fox, my first job as a film actor.
Speaker It starred Richard Widmark and Linda Darnell, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee were and it was a good movie that that’s Johnson is a pretty good movie.
Speaker And I went I came back to Nassau after that just for a visit so that I could see my folks again, but I was able to bring some gold with me. You know, you don’t know how much it meant both ways. There is the self disgust that you couldn’t manage in eight years to accumulate any money to send home on the one hand, and then the joy and the pleasure. On the other hand, having suddenly earned this three thousand dollars, after you’ve paid your taxes and agency fees, you’re still left with a considerable amount. I was able to go home and I came home. It was the first time in years.
Speaker Quite like I got.
Speaker Describe, describe your homecoming, describe.
Speaker Coming to the house.
Speaker I got off the plane and it was evening, I took a taxi. I told the cabbie where I was going and he took me to the street, to my home. I got out, I paid him, he took off and I had my little suitcase. And there was a light in the window of the kitchen. And I headed towards the light and I got to the window, which was propped open with a stick, and I heard voices with my mom and my dad, they were sitting at the table. I peeked in, they were talking, just the two of them, as they always did.
Speaker And I I just stood there listening to them for about two minutes, just listening to them.
Speaker And then I decided to do enter, I walked past the window around to the back of the kitchen, to the door, which was open, and I stepped in and they looked up and they saw me with this little suitcase that I was carrying.
Speaker How they looked, then they looked at each other and back to me and my mother said Kamath and I said nothing.
Speaker Kamath is the oldest, was then the oldest son of my brother, Cyril, who lived in Miami. And I said nothing. And my father chuckled a little and he looked at my mother puzzled, both of them absolutely puzzled. I said nothing. I’m looking at.
Speaker And out. Of somewhere.
Speaker It struck my mother. And she screamed and she leaped up from the table. And she just.
Speaker Threw herself through the air right on top of me and she grabbed a hold of me and she hugged me and both of her arms were behind me right now. And she was holding on to me and she was beating my back like that with her hands.
Speaker And she was. That was some time.
Speaker Some time, and my father was very happy, he was all smiles and giggling and clapping and stuff.
Speaker And my mother told me all the things still holding on to me, mind you, all the things that had to had transpired with her, how she thought I was dead. And she always prayed, she said, for a sign.
Speaker She said she wanted to know if I was or not, if you were what, that.
Speaker And, uh, she she wouldn’t let go of me, so I had to kind of walk with her on top of me and I and we kind of sat down together and then my father said, Evelyn, get the boy something to eat.
Speaker So she alternatively hugged you and and hit you, he beat you and say, why didn’t you get in touch with me? What did you say?
Speaker Well, she she was she was she chastised me pretty good for not being in touch and stuff like that.
Speaker And she let me know.
Speaker And, you know, she was always a woman who spoke of mine and, uh, to to to have a.
Speaker She was she let me know that I wasn’t that I wasn’t really that I shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t have done it.
Speaker And, uh, but the occasion was such that I think I I, uh, I escaped that I dodged that bullet a little bit.
Speaker That was homecoming. I’ll tell you, it was a.
Speaker Some homecoming for me, and they have no idea where I’d been, what I’d been doing and the fact that I had just finished making a movie was they couldn’t get it. They couldn’t get it because they were not moviegoers. They couldn’t understand what that meant and they didn’t try. I mean, it was like a blank stare and they would nod and say, oh, that’s nice. Not knowing what it meant, you know.
Speaker So that is the way it was with my mom and me when I came back after eight years.
Speaker And and and what was the problem about showing no way out here when the picture was got to get so?
Speaker Are you hearing my stomach tough? No, it’s not in his thing, so.
Speaker So.
Speaker So what was the situation with showing your movie by movie was persona non grata here by the movie censors?
Speaker They wouldn’t allow it in the country for colonial and racial reasons was nothing about the film that was salacious. It was quite a good film, very. But this country had not had that experience of having one of its citizens, a film actor, and playing a principal part in a film. They perceived it as propaganda unbecoming their colonial disposition.
Speaker So.
Speaker Let her shut the door first.
Speaker So the film.
Speaker They didn’t want to show it, there were the Heyman’s who said that you have to show it. So they just challenge the, uh, the censor board and they they realized means, well, the black Bahamian principly.
Speaker And they showed it. They showed the film.
Speaker Uh.
Speaker See, there was a sense aboard here that determine what films not to be shown, the films that they did show almost never had any black people in them.
Speaker And if, in fact they did, they were in positions of subservience. Those were fine. But the kind of part I played, they were they perceived them as threats for for whatever reason.
Speaker And they were all geared up to ban my picture, my first movie.
Speaker Just because you were in it. Exactly.
Speaker Just because I was playing the lead, just because I was in it and playing the principal part.
Speaker And because you weren’t a convict and you weren’t the best.
Speaker I was I was like they were unaccustomed to.
Speaker So.
Speaker So who showed it the first the census board had to be convinced to back down, and it did, then the local theater had to screen it and the local manager of that theater, which was the black theater in the black community, one of two, one of three that we could go to. He was a black Bahamian just manager, and he knew my folks.
Speaker So he invited my parents and family to come and see the movie on the opening night.
Speaker Well, what was it like for your mother?
Speaker Oh, well, for my mom, it was a kind of a traumatic experience, you know, because the picture was a picture about I was a doctor in a hospital and Richard Widmark accused me of being responsible for his brother’s death. His brother was they were both criminals. And that’s and he was going to get his revenge on me. And at the end, he got me in the basement and he pistol whipped me with a with the gun. His intent was to do that before he shot me. And he is beating on me with my mom, who is not a movie goer. She jumped up in the theater and she said, hit him back. Sidney hit him back. Hit him back. Well, that’s my mother. I mean, that’s the way she was. And also not accustomed to movies. She didn’t know that it was a movie movie, you know, and and she was so wrapped up in what was going on that that was her response. She she wanted me to hit her back.
Speaker And, uh, and that’s what had happened to you in America, was probably she thought that’s what had happened to you.
Speaker Yeah. She she saw it as as real. And, um. And that was her reaction.
Speaker That was her response to for me to to hit him back then you began coming back regularly and eventually built a home on Winton Highway. Did you want your daughters to have a sense of Bahamian identity and to know this family here?
Speaker Yeah, so I wanted my daughters to have a sense of of the Bahamas. A sense of the family here.
Speaker Yeah, that’s why I built the house. And do they try to do their.
Speaker When did you become a national hero?
Speaker When did I become a national hero? Wow, you characterize me as a national hero.
Speaker Well, Sydney one only has to see you on the streets just and or in the church or wherever to see that you are the most recognizable figure and am so close. I mean, it’s not like you’re a distant figure here. It’s like you’re a member of the family who who they love and revere.
Speaker I am a film actor and there is a response here to that.
Speaker Uh.
Speaker National hero.
Speaker I mean, like Kendall Isaacs and Cecil Wallace Whitfield and Lyndon Penlington and many others, they’re my little battler that I mentioned to you before this debate, and they’re their national heroes of the Bahamas. I’m a movie actor who is a Bahamian with Bahamian roots. Uh. You know, but they respond to me in that context, which is great, I love it. I mean, I’m well known and well received and well respected here for what I do.
Speaker What I do do evokes from them an appreciation and a respect. That’s what that’s the truth of this national hero. No, it’s not just a question of you being an actor.
Speaker I mean, I’m we’re and we certainly are not going into this section of it now. You know, we will later. But it was a question of you establishing a man of dignity and outrage and humanity in a way that nobody has was ever allowed to do. So before. You were the one who went out ahead and did it. And so, no, it was not just you as an actor. It was you as this person from the Bahamas who had that sense of purpose that people relate to.
Speaker They yeah. Well, if if if you are right. They relate to those qualities they see in characters I’ve played.
Speaker OK, I’ll buy that I and I take some responsibility for the selection of the characters I play, so there is some dovetailing of of of one to the other and yeah, OK, that’s that’s fine. But national hero. No, I, I like the the the reception I get when I’m home because what I’m getting is the concurrence of my fellows, you know what I mean.
Speaker It’s, uh, I’m, I’m, I’m offered their.
Speaker Appreciation and they and I’m offered.
Speaker There that they’re saying, I like what you’ve done. I thank you for bringing me a moment or two from time to time of enjoyment, and that’s great. I take that and I. I accept it quickly, wholeheartedly. I accept it. National hero is a broader, deeper, wider term. And these are this is a is a politically conscious community. And and the big heroes in this community are the ones who were instrumental in bringing the country to independence. They are the ones I’m I might have made contributions along the way, large or small. But the truth is the national heroes here that are the current among the young ones, for instance, are the young men who are trying to preserve what they perceive as their Bahamian culture, trying to keep it from being, too.
Speaker Obscured by the enormous presence of another culture close by and the intrusion or the inclusion of, uh, of of images from another culture coming in via electronically displayed television.
Speaker Simply put, you know, it’s a struggle, still a struggle still. We are a community here. We offer our best to those who wish to come for a vacation, for a arrest, for a honeymoon, for a visit, to enjoy what we have here. But to you know, we are in the modern world and we have problems that are commensurate with the rest of the modern world. And those questions have to be addressed and and there are young people trying to address them. And so we have following the generation that brought us independence, we have youngsters who are trying to take us farther and make us stronger.
Speaker And those are the national heroes. I come for an occasional visit. I have this responsibility as ambassador to Japan from the Bahamas that requires me to function on behalf of the country. And I do that with pleasure.
Speaker But it is my celebrity that makes that a useful activity on the country’s behalf. I am aware of that. I offer it with, uh, with great pride because my mother and my father, my sisters and my brothers are Albanians.
Speaker And this country is, uh.
Speaker It’s much harder for me, as is America, and I was born there, and I am fundamentally an American, fundamentally and America, fundamentally an American, because by the years subsequent to my departure. You’re talking about. Then you’re talking about.
Speaker Almost 60 years, uh, that I lived within an American sensibility, I lived as an American in America and, uh, I live with all of the attendant influences of race and class position.
Speaker Economics and education and all those whatever those things meant, I became a part of a part of all of that stuff, you know, so I’m an American, I am also a bohemian, and there is no law that I adhere to. That says differently, I mean, I am in my guts and American and my God, I’m a Bahamian, I don’t think there is any any conflict in that because that’s what I am.
Speaker I mean, 60 years in America and or close to 60 years in America. And it was years it was ten and a half years here. That’s what I made of. I’m made of American and Bahamian stuff.
Speaker Just stuff, you know.
Speaker How did how how did this ambassadorship come about, how did you involve yourself with the social structure, with politics?
Speaker Well, the ambassadorship was the idea of the prime minister and the honorable Hubert Ingram.
Speaker And, of course, I suspect he had the concurrence of his fellows in that regard. The approach was made to me and I thought about it and I said, yes, of course I would. If I can be of service to the country in that regard, I would be honored. And they they did. They submitted me to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as its ambassador. Arrangements were made for me to come to Japan and make my credentials present, my credentials to the emperor. I did. I went to Japan. I presented my credentials to the emperor of Japan. He received me, accepted my credentials. And I was officially a representative from the Bahamas to Japan. And I have had certain duties that are quite real and I’ve been busy attending them.
Speaker And, uh, it’s it’s wonderful.
Speaker I the fact that I am a fairly well-known person helps a lot in the job and to the benefit of the country.
Speaker So it’s it’s wonderful.
Speaker The, uh, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here in the Bahamas makes sure that I am up to speed on all the questions relating to the relationship between ourselves and Japan. And whenever I am in need of the necessary advisement or briefing, I will come down and so be briefed or someone would brief me in New York and I would get on a plane with whomever is accompanying me from the ministry. And we go to Japan and do the business of the country and come back. That essentially is what I do as ambassador.
Speaker But I’m sure I am mindful certainly of the the the effects that my being the ambassador might have on helping the image of our country in terms of what we do here.
Speaker What we do is we we are a tourist oriented society and and we wish to have more Japanese as we do more people from any other culture come and visit and take take part in our and what we have to offer. So I’m mindful of that. And that’s wonderful with me.
Speaker And the the Japanese had invested heavily in Hawaii and became almost a Japanese island in a certain sense. And then when they started to get into financial difficulty, they was like a pulling out from the island. How does their financial problem affect your approach to them, their financial problems?
Speaker First of all, their financial problem is going to be a temporary problem in time.
Speaker But the relationship with Japan and US is is a relationship that’s based on our desire to have that relationship itself deepen and broaden and to include many other aspects.
Speaker Right now, it includes some aspects of agriculture. We have we have an agricultural product that we would like very much to have the Japanese buy. They are very fond of it, very, very fond of it. And we’re in the process of enhancing that aspect of our relationship with grapefruit.
Speaker We have a fantastic grapefruit that we grow in the Bahamas and we, uh, we export that grapefruit.
Speaker We have many, many, many. We have a fifth or sixth largest ship registration country. In the world, we want to enhance that, we want to increase the number of ships that are registered under our flag, there is the question of of terrorism, however many more Japanese we can encourage to come and visit with us as tourists.
Speaker That’s a part of our.
Speaker Program investments here in the Bahamas by the Japanese nationals, Japanese corporations is another part of the portfolio. We we have a wonderful investment opportunities here. The Japanese are interested, as are many people in Hong Kong, with what we can do and offer to their businesses as a transshipment point, for instance, in Freeport and Freeport, Grand Bahama. We have a transshipment port that is called the Whampoa transhipment. That’s an enormous conglomerate in Hong Kong. And they deal with moving goods to South America and moving goods to the eastern seaboard of the United States, et cetera. And they have this transhipment port that is absolutely extraordinary up in Freeport. I visited it and it is a huge a huge bit of industrial inclusion for our country. And everywhere you look, there are opportunities for Japan and the and the Bahamas to enhance their relationship. I am the instrument of one of the instruments that is being used to that end.
Speaker Uh, diplomacy is a an activity that can be learned largely. And the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have been been sculpting me and helping me to to know, to understand.
Speaker In the meantime, I come with a celebrity that does have an effect, maybe not much, but at least gets us noticed sometimes in areas where it’s important.
Speaker And it’s you must win when you come back here.
Speaker Have a sense of an arc of your life starting out, as you know, tomato farming and ending up here as an ambassador for your country, that this journey you’ve gone on has been an extraordinary event, catapulting you into an extraordinary new adventures, new adventures, new adventures.
Speaker Yeah, well, my journey has been an adventure, and being an ambassador is a part of the adventure and stuff.
Speaker I don’t stop long to evaluate it to. Take stock of it. I mean, it’s so much of it has happened that I didn’t. Junior, so I don’t and I know that I didn’t do it all by myself.
Speaker This journey was a collective effort, nature and God and me and lots of good people whose paths I’ve crossed and all kinds of combinations went into the weaving of this journey for all these years.
Speaker So when I take stock, if ever I do, I first look at that, you see, and that prohibits me from coming up with any.
Speaker Bill Oriented Conclusion’s.
Speaker You know, the journey is quite a journey.
Speaker Yeah, but it is a journey with many parts and many, many energies driving it, many energies driving it.
Speaker There is a case that can be made for it, having been predetermined, depending on your philosophical point of view, depending on one’s religion.
Speaker Do you believe that?
Speaker I don’t disbelieve it because I have no proof, nor am I seeking proof. But objectively speaking, since we don’t know. If there is anything to the philosophical suggestion that predetermination is a possibility or whether predetermination is just wishful thinking, there is no evidence substantial enough to come down on either side.
Speaker So it has to remain in the inactive possibility.
Speaker So we put that aside. If you if you eliminate that for the moment, then how do you explain the journey? If you eliminate that, then you have to say, well, serendipity, chance luck and serendipity, chance luck.
Speaker The accident of randomness and chaos mixed with all of the other imponderables.
Speaker It’s it’s it’s that, too is possible, you see, not only in my journey and in every journey.
Speaker Mm hmm. Because if randomness and chaos is in our ingredients, in nature itself, and they are at least we’ve we’ve we’ve been able to nail that down.
Speaker Through science, then not only does it exist or could it exist just in scientific terms, as if it has it does, for instance, in what we call or what is well known as the as the some subatomic area they call, what do they call it anyway?
Speaker Think of it in a minute.
Speaker But as we look at these areas of imponderables. Our best judgment is either, yeah, some of that is possible or no, that’s not possible or none of it’s possible or of that if we don’t know. But what we do know is that logic and reason, which is the yardstick, we measure everything by including ourselves.
Speaker And logic and reason is a tool developed out of trial and error. That’s how we conclude that something is likely to happen, is because we have tried and the percentages were so logic and reason is not an exact science either. But that’s the best yardstick we have. And logic tells us that there’s a possibility that predetermination might have some influence on where we go and why we turn certain corners at a given time. On the other hand, it might be serendipity and all kinds of other things at play.
Speaker Never is it exclusively.
Speaker No way for any of us. Not possible. At best.
Speaker We are a part of a mix and we become with something either curiosity or a or an energy that just drives us in a certain direction. We come with something. We make we have we are a raw material that is included in the process. But the elements that make up that which we in which we are included can be all kinds of elements, some tangible, some not some physical, some otherwise and some scientific, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And all that mix, if you examine them, none of which we control or even understand. So therefore, for our egos to get in the center of that mix and pass a judgment as to its importance in it a lot.
Speaker Not very useful.
Speaker So it has nothing to do with you, you’re just a very lucky guy.
Speaker I am a lucky guy. I am a lucky guy. You say that flippantly, but it is true. I am a lucky guy. I’m a lucky guy, among other things.
Speaker I’m a lucky guy who is curious. You see, I’m a lucky guy who was able to stay the course in terms of what he what he wanted to do, what he wanted to see. But they’re lucky. There are guys who were not lucky who do stay the course as well. That’s true. You see, and there are guys who were curious and stayed the course and were not lucky.
Speaker So the valuation has to be without.
Speaker Without ego, without self-interest, because otherwise it’s a disrespect of those elements that were that were absolutely indispensable to whatever you perceive as your successful journey, you know, you leave room.
Speaker I mean, I think giving the ego its due, it’s OK, know, but don’t build any altar to it. Here it is.
Speaker Gets in the way.
Speaker Talk about being knighted. How did that come about? And what’s the process?
Speaker I don’t altogether know the specifics of how the process operates, but I do know what précis knighthood.
Speaker I was knighted by the queen.
Speaker Here in the Bahamas, not that she came here, but it is the the, uh, the ritual is performed here on her behalf.
Speaker I was suggested for a knighthood by Linden binLaden.
Speaker We were very, very close friends from when we were both very young here and in Nassau. As a matter of fact, when I first came in, I saw that I met him.
Speaker He was one of the guys near the Rascon area because he lived just a block away.
Speaker Uh. He and his fellows.
Speaker Placed me on a list, I suppose, and that’s how it eventually happened.
Speaker I can’t tell you much more about it.
Speaker Uh.
Speaker I have the whatever they give you and whatever they give you put up here and stuff, but I was very I felt honored by that because it is handed to people who are who have been in some way useful and.
Speaker So I appreciate that coming from the country and from the leadership of the country and a very active where you saw your country change to majority rule in nineteen sixty seven and gain full independence in nineteen seventy three, talk about that. And I think we have talked about that. I think to an extent we have.
Speaker And and I know that your most important relationship was with Sir Kendall Isaacs.
Speaker Tell me about him, his stature and his role and your friendship.
Speaker Well, uh, Colonel Isaacs was a very good friend of mine, old friend.
Speaker I remember he used to go to school up where I went to school in the eastern part of the island. Uh, when I first saw him, as a matter of fact, you I saw him playing football, soccer on Eastern, on the east and parade ground. He was such a terrific athlete and a very cool looking kid. I mean, he was really always splendidly well-dressed and very, very well contained in personality wise.
Speaker Was he a middle class kid, middle class kid, very well reared kid, wonderful manners, very smart, very smart. And he was when I got to know him well, we were see, we came from kind of different sides of the tracks. Mm hmm.
Speaker And for a long time, I admired him from a distance because he had the kind of carriage of a kind of way about him that I rather liked.
Speaker And years later, when I became an actor and stuff and stuff and stuff, our paths would cross again several times. And slowly we became very, very close friends.
Speaker And he was a pleasure, an absolute pleasure.
Speaker And there were other other guys I had, Fred, before we leave for Kendall, was he instrumental in gaining independence or of course he was instrumental in gaining independence?
Speaker He was he was instrumental in gaining independence, as was most of the people on the island. I mean, they had to vote for the pope. They had to vote. And the pope at that time was the was the standard bearer of the hopes and dreams of the people of the native people. Kendall was no different from from those people. He was he wanted to see this country independent. They wanted to see all of the benefits that were brought to this country by independence.
Speaker And, uh, but he was he was principally a he was an intellect. He was. An exquisite man of letters and the law, uh, and his whole life, he remained that until his until he died, but he also was a member of the opposition at one time. And he functioned quite effectively as that. And he brought to the process of democracy and.
Speaker And undeniable clarity and the power of having a democracy in which there is a tireless, strong and and committed opposition force.
Speaker What do you mean by opposition opposition? The Democrats are presently the opposition in the in the House and in America, for instance, two parties that form the foundation of the democracy, as it did here in this country, was supposed to do here in this country in the old days before the people won the election. But then the fair participation of the majority of Bahamian people in their own destiny was possible after the victory of the pope and Catholics in that period and in the subsequent period when he became a member of the opposition party, became the head of the opposition party.
Speaker As a matter of fact, he functioned in a way that kept focus on what was absolutely necessary to nurture and to strengthen the democratic process and also to keep the the incumbency aware of of what the the aspirations of the community are. He was very good at that and he became an icon in the country.
Speaker So what was it about him that inspired you? So.
Speaker He was, I suppose, his passion for learning, his passion for fairness.
Speaker His passion, his stick to it even as he pursued politics when politics was not the core of himself with with other guys. The politics was they were experienced at it. They loved it and they pursued it as politicians.
Speaker He he was essentially other things. You know, he was a scholar and he was extremely well-read, not just in the law, but he was well-read in philosophy and in other areas of that. He was just kind of a renaissance guy, you know, he just knew so much.
Speaker And what and and what did you get out personally of your friendship with him?
Speaker When you sit down with a guy like Analisa to discuss a question, you can feel absolutely free to go in any direction on a question. He was always, to my knowledge, able to deal deeper than the cosmetic appearance on any issue. That’s how I learned he was. That’s how it really was. And I find that stimulating because I am I am curious. He’s had a deeper education than I ever was able to get. I admired what he knew, and I. I like to be exposed to that mind and the things that came out of it, by the same token, we were able to play golf together and be able to play tennis together. We’re able to spend time together and just be a couple of regular guys doing tennis or doing golf or talking about trivial, unimportant things. That’s the kind of friend he was. He was an all around, had an all around impact on me.
Speaker Uh, and I miss him. Where were you when when he died? I was in South Africa.
Speaker When when, uh, he I and I came here for his funeral.
Speaker Uh.
Speaker Good man, he was good man, good man, did wonderfully well by his country, and he was given now he was given a national heroes funeral.
Speaker He was given he was given such a magnificent funeral.
Speaker Did you speak?
Speaker I I said some words, yes.
Speaker It’s one who can be a buddy and be an intellect like that, totally rare, and that that’s what he was. You know, he was. He was right. He was totally around.
Speaker He was and he could laugh easily and self-deprecating. He would tell jokes on himself. And had a great confidence in himself and himself, but also and his wife and his wife.
Speaker It was a. Patsy, Patsy Isaacs, he was one, he was ill. And as the disease progressed.
Speaker She was early in her life. Nurse.
Speaker And the degree to which he just completely turned himself over to her was so. Oh, boy, it was it was touching. It was just.
Speaker Did you think that there is that kind of terrible unfairness in a man with that kind of brain and that kind of knowledge to be hit with Alzheimer’s?
Speaker Do I think it’s about fairness? An incredible you know, you asking a question that puts me in the position of Judge Judgeship by I think to be ironic, ironic or ironic.
Speaker Applicable. Yes. But to have had that kind of life.
Speaker To have had that kind of intellect, to have understood as much as he understood and to have that kind of curiosity, he was already blessed to see and the Alzheimer’s took him, took his life at the age of seventy three or four. So he had a lot of years when his mind was shot and as quick and as as probing as ever, you know. So we weigh that against the onslaught of Alzheimer’s, which killed him after a few years. I mean, there is no trade off, there is no real trade off there, because what he was was was a gift. You know, if the Alzheimer’s took five years to kill him, he had sixty nine great years. And of those 69 great years, he was useful to his country. He was certainly a joy to his friends and his family. And in the history of the Bahamas, Ken Isaacs will have a place, uh, if we all go like that, however it is, if we leave behind us that kind of journey that will be remembered and appreciated. What takes us out is. It’s not really so much the matter.
