At age twelve, Percy stowed away on a passenger train to New York City, where he slept under a sign on 155th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of the Manhattan borough of the city. Ironically, his oldest sister, Lillian Sutton Taylor who was 20 years his senior, was attending Columbia Teacher's College at the time. His oldest brother John Sutton, a food scientist who had studied under George Washington Carver, and also in Russia, was living in New York at the time Percy arrived there. His family clearly had resources, a sense of adventure and determination during a time when many African-Americans were extremely limited in options.