Sidney Poitier: There Will Be No Other
There will be no other. Sidney Poitier, "paved the way for Black actors in film," but it is all too apparent he paved the way for ALL actors and helped shaped a humanity that without him, may still be longing for such a changemaker and pathfinder. Poitier was the first Black performer to win the Oscar for best actor for “Lilies of the Field,” and is well known for saying he felt “as if I were representing 15, 18 million people with every move I made.” I believe with all my heart that Mr. Poitier was as crucial in the odyssey of freedom and equality for Black Americans — for personhood — as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, as Martin Luther King Jr. A clear descendant of Douglass’s rhetorical brilliance, he spoke the words of white people but from his own mouth. His projected image begot what is now a galaxy of other Black actors. - Wesley Morris, The New York Times Sidney Poitier, born in 1927 in Miami and grew up in the Bahamas, rose to distinction at the outset...