Sidney Poitier

His parents farmed on Cat Island in the Bahamas and shipped tomatoes to Miami wholesalers, and he arrived on one of those trips, two months premature, on February 20, 1927. Nobody expected him to live. They stayed three months nursing him, and the accident of an American birth handed him a citizenship he would use. He lived on Cat Island until he was ten and saw his first automobile, his first electric light and his first motion picture only after the family moved to Nassau. At 15 he was sent back to Miami to a brother's house and could not stomach Jim Crow Florida. At 16 he was in New York washing dishes. He failed his first American Negro Theatre audition because he could not read a script fluently.

An elderly Jewish waiter sat with him night after night over a newspaper for months until he could. He spent half a year stripping out his Bahamian accent, modeling the voice on the radio announcer Norman Brokenshire, and got in on the second attempt. No Way Out came in 1950 and Blackboard Jungle in 1955. The Defiant Ones in 1958 made him the first Black man nominated for Best Actor. On April 13, 1964, he won it, for Lilies of the Field. In 1967 he had three of the year's biggest pictures — To Sir, with Love, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner — and was voted the top box-office draw in America. He directed from 1972, and Stir Crazy in 1980 outgrossed every other film by a Black director for years.

Before any of that he was blacklisted. He helped found the Committee for the Negro in the Arts in 1947 and served as a vice chair in the early 1950s, and his friendships with Paul Robeson and Canada Lee were enough to get the producer of one of his own early films blacklisted alongside him. He never signed a loyalty oath, even when asked to for Blackboard Jungle. The Oscar settled nothing. He suspected the industry was congratulating itself for having him at all, and that the statue would make it harder to ask for anything substantive afterward. He worked little the following year, and the parts on offer were soft-spoken appeasers. His 1967 answer was flat: change the society and he would scream to play villains, but there was only one Negro actor working consistently in films.

He kept acting into the 1990s, then took a second career entirely: ambassador of the Bahamas to Japan from 1997 to 2007, and to UNESCO from 2002. Queen Elizabeth II made him an honorary knight in 1974, the Academy gave him an honorary Oscar in 2002, and Barack Obama gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. In 2021 the Academy named the lobby of its new museum after him. He died at home in Beverly Hills on January 6, 2022, at 94, of cardiopulmonary failure, with Alzheimer's disease and prostate cancer listed as contributing. The line that has worn best is Denzel Washington's: you could not cut Sidney Poitier out of a Sidney Poitier picture.

Sidney Poitier's life against the full span of the corpus.

• No Way Out film
  His debut, as a doctor treating a white bigot played by Richard Widmark 1950
• The Defiant Ones film
  The first Best Actor nomination for a Black man, and a Silver Bear at Berlin 1958
• Lilies of the Field film
  The Oscar, awarded April 13, 1964 1963
• In the Heat of the Night film
  One of three hits that year, and Virgil Tibbs 1967
• Buck and the Preacher film
  His directing debut, taken over from Joseph Sargent 1972
• This Life book
  The first of three memoirs. It won a Coretta Scott King Award 1980

• February 20, 1927 aged 0 Born in Miami, two months early, while his parents were selling produce He was not expected to survive. The birth made him a US citizen.
• 1942 aged ~15 Sent back to Miami at 15 and collides with Jim Crow He left for New York City the following year.
• November 1943 aged 16 Lies about his age at 16 and enlists in the Army Assigned to a veterans' hospital, he feigned mental illness to get out in December 1944.
• 1950 aged ~23 Makes his film debut in No Way Out
• 1958 aged ~31 The Defiant Ones brings the first Best Actor nomination for a Black actor
• April 13, 1964 aged 37 Wins Best Actor for Lilies of the Field He worked little in the year that followed.
• 1967 aged ~40 Three hit films in one year make him the top box-office star in America
• April 1997 aged 70 Appointed ambassador of the Bahamas to Japan
• January 6, 2022 aged 94 Dies at home in Beverly Hills at 94

• Lorraine Hansberry 1930–1965
  Playwright whose 'A Raisin in the Sun' brought Black family life, housing discrimination, and aspiration to Broadway. starred in her A Raisin in the Sun
• Katharine Hepburn 1907–2003
  Four-time Oscar-winning actress whose independent spirit and wit made her a screen legend. co-star in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
• Richard Pryor 1940–2005
  Comedian whose candid treatment of race, class, addiction, and personal experience transformed American stand-up. directed him in Stir Crazy
• Denzel Washington b. 1954
  Academy Award-winning actor and director regarded as one of the greatest actors of his generation. presented his honorary Oscar in 2002
• Morgan Freeman b. 1937
  Academy Award-winning actor whose commanding voice and gravitas made him a beloved cultural figure. the doors he was later said to have opened
• Gordon Parks 1912–2006
  Photographer for Life magazine and first Black director of a major Hollywood studio film. photographer turned director on the same ground