Early Life
Little is certain about his background other than that he was born in Key West, Florida to West Indian immigrants. He was the second child of Joseph Perry, a cigar maker from Jamaica (although some sources indicate the Bahamas) and Dora Monroe, a seamstress from Nassau. Both of his parents came to the United States in the 1890s, where they married. By 1910, the family had moved north to Tampa, Florida. Another source says he was adopted when he was eleven years old and taken to live in Montgomery, Alabama.
His mother wanted him to be a dentist, so Perry was adopted by a quack dentist, where he blacked boots before running away at age twelve to join a carnival. He earned his living for a few years as a singer and tap dancer. By the age of twenty, Perry had become a Vaudeville artiste and the manager of a traveling carnival show. He performed a vaudeville act with a partner, with the two of them being known as "Step" and "Fetchit". When Perry became a solo act he combined the two names, which later became his professional name.
Read more about this topic: Stepin Fetchit
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)