Sidney Poitier was born in Miami in 1927 and grew up on Cat Island in the Bahamas. As a teenager, he moved to Miami and then New York. The Television Academy describes him as Bahamian-American, while Arizona State University explicitly identifies him as African American in its account of his historic Oscar.
In New York, Poitier worked as a dishwasher and later entered the American Negro Theatre. His path to acting was not immediate: a Smithsonian account describes an unsuccessful early audition and subsequent work on reading and speech.
His films included The Defiant Ones, released in 1958, and A Raisin in the Sun in 1961. On April 13, 1964, he won the Academy Award for leading actor for Lilies of the Field, a film released the previous year. He was the first Black performer to win the leading-actor category.
Three notable films followed in 1967: To Sir, with Love, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night. Smithsonian curator David Haberstich’s account notes Poitier’s insistence that his detective character in In the Heat of the Night return a racist man’s slap.
Poitier also directed, including the comedy Stir Crazy, starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. His television performances earned Emmy nominations for portraying Thurgood Marshall in Separate But Equal and Nelson Mandela in Mandela and De Klerk.
Away from film, he participated in the civil-rights struggle and later served as the Bahamas’ ambassador to Japan from 1997 to 2007. Arizona State announced the naming of its film school for him in January 2021. He died on January 6, 2022.
