Sidney Poitier Dies: Trailblazing Actor, Civil Rights Activist Was 94
deadline.comSidney Poitier, the trailblazing and iconic Black actor, director, civil rights activist and humanitarian, has died, Bahamian Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell has announced.Details of his death were not immediately available.The first Black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor – for 1964’s Lilies of the Field – Poitier was towering figure in Hollywood and beyond, starring in such classics as A Raisin in the Sun, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night and To Sir With Love, to name a select few, while taking on a global profile for his unceasing calls for civil rights, racial equality and human dignity.Born into a large Bahamian family while his parents were visiting Miami, Poitier grew up in the Bahamas but moved to America when he was 15, settling in New York City a year later.
He later joined the North American Negro Theatre, and in 1950 was courted by Hollywood with a role in No Way Out. Within five years he was starring in Blackboard Jungle.Three years after his breakthrough role in Blackboard Jungle, Poitier was co-starring with top Hollywood draws like Tony Curtis, with whom Poitier appeared in The Defiant Ones.
Both Poitier and Curtis were Oscar-nominated for the 1958 film – Poitier’s first and the first nomination for a Black actor.
Poitier would win the award six years later, for his indelible performance as a handyman building a chapel for a group of nuns in Lilies of the Field (1963).Poitier’s groundbreaking early-career performances included roles in Porgy and Bess (1959), A Raisin in the Sun (1961) and, in 1965, A Patch of Blue.From the start of his Hollywood career, Poitier’s roles – in Blackboard Jungle, A Raisin in the Sun, Lillies of the Field and A Patch of Blue – dealt
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