The first Black performer to win the Best Actor Oscar recalls his earliest struggles against poverty and prejudice
In repose, the face was handsomely boyish, untroubled, perhaps not too unlike that of the boy who had left the Bahamas at 15 to explore the other side of the horizon. There was a slight scar over the right eye from a stage accident and a blurred scar on the left calf from a stray police bullet fired during a Harlem riot. But for all his 37 years, both his face and his figure were in excellent shape. So were his career and finances. For 15 years, in films like No Way, and , which he also did as a play on Broadway, he had established himself as one of the finest actors in the business.
