Sidney Poitier, the trailblazing leading man who in the Civil Rights era loomed as large as an inspirational figure as he did a movie star, died Thursday. He was 94.
The family confirmed his death on Friday after the Bahamian Minister of Foreign Affairs first shared the news. “There are no words to convey the deep sense of loss and sadness we are feeling right now. We are so grateful he was able to spend his last day surrounded by his family and friends,” his family said in a statement.
“To us Sidney Poitier was not only a brilliant actor, activist and a man of incredible grace and moral fortitude, he was also a devoted and loving husband, a supportive and adoring father and a man who always put family first. He is our guiding light who lit up our lives with infinite love and wonder. … Although he is no longer here with us in this realm, his beautiful soul will continue to guide and inspire us.”
In 1964, Poitier became the first African American to win the Best Actor Oscar.
Sidney Poitier, at the 2002 Academy Awards, has died. (Photo: Frank Micelotta/GettyImages)
Poitier’s film credits include In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Defiant Ones and Lillies of the Field. All but the latter, which brought Poitier the Academy Award, were explicitly about the defining topic of his career, if not his times: race.
To Black artists who came of age during Poitier’s heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, the actor was their North Star. Poitier was, after all, not merely mainstream Hollywood’s first Black movie star; in the mid-20th century, he was the only Black movie star. “He meant everything to me,” Denzel Washington, the first Black actor since Poitier to claim Best Actor, said at the 1992 American Film Institute tribute to his mentor. “He was a positive example of elegance and good taste.”
Poitier’s grace was exhibited under intense pressure. If his films weren’t being banned by local (white) governments, then his rise to box-office prominence was taken down a notch by (Black) critics who saw his movie roles as too accommodating.
“I was carrying the hopes and aspirations of an entire people,” Poitier said in 1989. “It was a terrific burden.”
Born Feb. 20, 1927, in Miami, Poitier was raised in the Bahamas. As an impoverished young teen, he returned to Florida, and for the first time was confronted with the racial-segregation laws that then ruled the South. Poitier soon moved north to New York City.
There, he scraped by as a dishwasher and janitor. He was in and out of the Army. At the end of his rope, he wrote President Franklin D. Roosevelt and asked for $100 so he could return to the Bahamas. He never heard back from the White House. Instead, he found Harlem’s American Negro Theatre, the launching pad of Black stars such as Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee and Harry Belafonte. While going on stage in place of Belafonte, his future lifelong friend and fellow trailblazer, he caught a producer’s eye. In 1946, at age 19, he made his Broadway debut.
Poitier’s fortunes were changing about as rapidly as United States society. In 1947, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. In 1948, the U.S. Army was ordered to end segregation in its ranks. And in 1950, the 24-year-old Poitier played a doctor in his first major Hollywood film, No Way Out.